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GREAT VICTORIANS 



GREAT VICTORIANS 

MEMORIES AND PERSONALITIES 



BY 

T. H. S. ESCOTT 

El 

AUTHOR OF 

"THE STORY OF BRITISH DIPLOMACY," 

•'CLUB MAKERS AND CLUB MEMBERS," 

ETC. 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

597 599 FIFTH AVENUE 

1916 



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(y4// rights reserved) 

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 



MY BROTHER, 

THE REVEREND E. HERBERT S. ESCOTT, 

The head of my family, as the possessor of 
Hartrow Manor, round which and its neigh- 
bourhood many of the persons or incidents 
recalled in the following pages naturally group 
themselves, with all appreciation of his public 
services, at Dulwich College and elsewhere, 
to the education and culture of his time, 

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED, 

WITH ALL GOOD WISHES, 

BY ITS AUTHOR, 

T. H. S. ESCOTT. 



PREFACE 

Family accidents or personal chances brought 
me, from a very early age, into the presence 
of celebrated or interesting personages, in most 
cases more or less connected with my native 
West of England. In less immature life, em- 
ployments and associations added extension or 
intimacy to this kind of acquaintanceship, giving 
me a knowledge that was at least first-hand of 
not a few among the most characteristic as well 
as often entertaining products of their time. 

In cases like Bishop Phillpotts and the first 
Duke of Wellington, a tolerably good memory 
brought before me, as clearly as if I had seen 
them yesterday, much that was most impressive 
in their appearance, their manner, and the 
"habit in which they lived." For their distinc- 
tive attributes of various kinds, manifested in 
the parts they played and the principles for which 
they stood, I have been fortunate in being able 
to draw upon their contemporaries or their rela- 
tives^ who had the authentic tradition concerning 

7 



Preface 

them. Such, as regards the Duke, were his son, 
the second Duke, and his most intimate and Hfe- 
long friend, the Rev. G. R. Gleig, so long the 
Army Chaplain -General. In the case of the 
Bishop, I have been similarly helped by his 
grandson, son of the Archdeacon of Cornwall, 
James Surtees Phillpotts, formerly a Rugby 
master, and headmaster of Bedford, now living 
at Tunbridge Wells, by my old college friend, 
the Rev. A. L. Eoulkes, long a clergyman in 
the Exeter Diocese, and by Mr. Edmund Gosse, 
whose invaluable kindness refreshed a dim 
recollection of the Bishop as, during his last 
years, he could be seen in his retirement at 
Torquay. As a child I had first seen the Bishop 
with or at the house of my relative, Samuel 
Trehawke Kekewich, of " Peamore " ; his late 
son was good enough to check and supplement 
my own memories, as well as from his own 
experience to describe the Bishop's oratorical 
methods and effects on platforms or in 
Parliament, and their curious resemblance to 
his private conversation at dinner -tables and 
in drawing-rooms. The Bishop's alliance with 
Lord Derby against the Coalition Government 
of 1853, and the remarkable bitterness of his 
invective, first placed him high among the 
chief debaters on the Conservative side in the 

8 



Preface 

Upper House. The second Earl Granville was 
one of the few peers belonging to that Adminis- 
tration who lived into my time. To him I was 
indebted for singularly lifelike accounts of the 
Bishop's performances. Indeed, without Lord 
Granville's help, what has been said as to the 
impression left by the Bishop on his immediate 
contemporaries would have been less distinct and 
fresh than I hope is now the case. 

As regards many other details, th^ intimacy 
enjoyed by me from my earliest youth with 
A. W. Kinglake, Abraham Hayward, and others 
brought back to me, long before I had any idea 
6i writing these pages, many types of their time 
with whom personal acquaintance on my part 
would have been impossible, but whose omis- 
sion from a book bearing the present title must 
have rendered it grievously incomplete. Finally, 
while I have not consciously drawn upon any 
memoirs, autobiographies, or diaries recently 
published, I would gratefully acknowledge the 
valuable and interesting private letters in which 
Sir Donald Stewart's daughter. Lady Eustace, 
has revived and enlarged my recollection, not 
only of her distinguished father, but of the other 
Anglo-Indian generals of his day. 

T. H. S. ESCOTT. 
West Brighton, 

December 191 5. 

9 



CONTENTS 



PREFACE . . . . . . .7 

CHAPTER I 

MITRE AND BATON . . . . . -23 

A memorable confirmation address in the old church, Bideford — 
Henry of Exeter's watchword for the newly confirmed, " Incor- 
porate " into the Body of Christ, the Church — The skull-cap and 
episcopal robes in the religious light — Wizard or priest? — An 
address that reaffirms all those doctrines whose repudiation by the 
Brampford Speke clergyman, and whose disregard by the Primate, 
Dr. Howley, had brought about Henry's long war against the Gorham 
heresies and his excommunication of the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury — Indifference of his diocese to these escapades and local pride — 
His intrepidity as the champion of the reaction to clerical mediaeval- 
ism and the subordination of State to Church — Bishop Phillpotts' 
position, social and political, as a type and leader of that move- 
ment — His gradual preparation for it, first as Tory High Church 
pamphleteer, d- la Jonathan Swift — Society success began when he 
became Dean of Chester — Faimous hosts and guests in and out of 
London — Diocesan work and social progresses in Devonshire — The 
right-hand man. Archdeacon Freeman, more advanced and uncom- 
promising than the Bishop himself — The leavening of the West 
with anti- Reformation principles by Mr. Prynne at St. Mary's, 
Plymouth — The devotee who not only brushed the church floor 
but licked it with her tongue thoroughly to clean it, and made 
the Bishop smack his lips with delight — Social discourses on Dr. 
Johnson's text about the devil as the first Whig — At daggers drawn 
with Jeffrey, Brougham, and all concerned with the Edinbtirgh 
Review — A Bishop after the Duke of Wellington's own heart — At 
Buckingham Palace with the Duke as Oxford Chancellor to con- 
gratulate Queen Victoria on her marriage — A little dialogue on 
punctuality as the politeness of princes — The Bishop before the 
looking-glass at his palace — The episcopal sugar-plums and picture- 

II 



Contents 

PAGX 

books — The Bishop and the hunting parsons — The Bishop's gracious 
way with an Evangelical clergyman about the " Shebbear rogues " 
— Henry of Exeter's table-talk as the rehearsal of his speeches in 
Parliament — The Bishop and Lord Derby understand each other 
about the Canada Clergy Reserves Bill — Lander's " Belial Bishop" 
— Henry stands for damnation, not condemnation — The gamecock 
of the aristocratic Tories — The house party at Mount Edgcumbe 
and what came of it — The conqueror of Waterloo and Henry of 
Exeter meet — The Bishop lionizes the Duke over Exeter Cathedral 
— The Duke's account of it given to the Rev. G. R. Gleig — The 
dark and fearful face in the bath-chair — Henry of Exeter's doctrines 
and influence carried into Somerset by the Rev. M. F. Sadler of 
Bridgwater, who exercised on Archdeacon Denison something of the 
same influence as Archdeacon Freeman exercised on Bishop Phillpotts 
— The Archdeacon's brother, the Speaker, on " St. George without 
the drag-on " — The Archdeacon's own account of his conversion 
to Ritualism — The Vicar of East Brent and the school inspector — 
The latter welcomed with " Old Daddy Longlegs wouldn't say his 
prayers " — The first Duke of Wellington as a West of England 
worthy — Restoration of the Wellington pillar on the Blackdown 
Hills — The Duke's West of England and other progresses — The 
Duke at Kilve Court, Hartrow Manor, and Hatfield — The Duke as 
I remember him in the West — His grace's short way with black- 
mailers and other people's duns — The second Duke's likeness and 
unlikeness to his father — The same short, sharp, sententious manner 
of speech and of dealing with his fellow-men — How not to become 
a coroner — Sir Henry Irving's train from Strathfieldsaye — A danger- 
ously good memory for exposing the plagiarisms in travellers' tales 
and the inconsistencies of fiction-mongers about their famous friends, 
e.g. the Cumbrays and the recipient of Bismarck's stolen goods from 
Gambetta — The Duke, George IV, and the cavalry of various 
nations — The Duke as an art patron : ' ' Not going to let Coutts' 
people know what a fool I have been " — How the Duke raised a 
Paris monument in H.B.M. Embassy, 29 Faubourg St. Honore — 
The Duke, Lady Catherine Pakenham, and the young physician. 



CHAPTER II 

FROM WELLINGTON TO WOLSELEY . . . • 91 

A Lemon Street statue for Lord Raglan as a Truro ex-M.P. — Fitzroy 
Somerset acts "Ulysses" on the Latin play stage at Westminster 
School — Grinds at Spanish with the future Duke of Wellington on 
the voyage out to the Peninsula — By marriage with Lady Harriet 
Wellesley becomes the Duke's nephew-in-law — During the peace 

12 



Contents 

interval of 1814 Secretary of the Duke's Paris Embassy — House 
of Commons days — Military promotion and created Lord Raglan 
in 1852— With the Badminton foxhounds and in the Savernake 
game coverts — As aide-de-camp at Waterloo loses his arm, but 
will not lose the ring vk^hich is a present from his wife — After the 
Crimea, Cardigan and his colonels on the King's Road, Brighton — 
Aristocrat and hussar — The old patrician regime personified — 
Much virtue in the lash — The soldiers starving and the General in 
a floating palace — Alvanley and Cardigan in the shires — Assheton 
Smith and Cardigan ride against each other with the hounds till 
their horses nearly drop — The trooper and the dying Colonel : "All 
safe for heaven ! " — Gradual appearance of new and better military 
types — Sir William Knollys, the founder of the Aldershot camp — 
Indian soldiers as English teachers — Lord Lawrence of the Punjab 
— Chairman of the London School Board — John and Henry's 
respective epitaphs — Comparison between the two brothers — Lord 
Hardinge and the Lawrences — Governor-General of India — The 
Sikh wars— Lough Cutra Castle— St. Helen's, Dublin—" Paddy 
Gough" — Chillianwallah — Hardinge's gallantry in the Peninsula — 
"What, tents, and chairs inside them ! " — Mrs. Disraeli's luck in her 
nocturnal neighbours — At daggers drawn with the Duke of New- 
castle and the Cabinet during the Crimean War — Dies at Tunbridge 
Wells in 1856 — Outram, the "Bayard of India" — Sir Colin 
Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde, of Crimean and Indian fame — 
His delight with the House of Lords, with all he sees in town or 
country — Romps with children in the hay field — Sir Donald Stewart 
as he looked and walked in Kensington Gardens — A typical High- 
lander with Norse strain in blood and features — Return to India — 
Commander-in-Chief in India — A Councillor at the India Office — 
His character summed up by Lord Bryce — A keen sportsman — 
Picturesque figure and surroundings at Chelsea Hospital — His 
opinion of the British soldier — Sir Louis Mallet — His Board of 
Trade work — Appointment to the under-secretaryship in 1874 — 
Grandson of Mallet du Pan, the French publicist and Revolution 
refugee — Comes to represent Cobdenism at the India Office — Free 
Trader, economist, and cosmopolitan conversationist — How he 
saw a great Duke fall downstairs at a Paris cafe and helped to pick 
him up dead — Sir Henry Norman — Norman as soldier and pupil 
in the Lawrence school — The might-have-been Viceroy of 1892 — His 
last promotion to the Chelsea Hospital governorship — Anglo-Indian 
preparation for the improved officer of the nineteenth- and twentieth- 
century type — Roberts and Salisbury afloat — A glass of cold water : 
" Thy necessity is greater than mine " — Some points in common 
between Roberts and Wolseley — Sir George Hamley, the Wolseley 
type; the new Army and the results — Henry Brackenbury as a, 
type and worker — Sir Evelyn Wood and Sir Coleridge Grove, the 
only two survivors of the Wolseley school — Sword, pen, and Sir 

13 



Contents 

PAGE 

Evelyn Wood — War correspondent types from Xenophon to John 
and Henry Hozier — The three brothers : Sir William, Charles, and 
Keith Fraser — Brackenbury's diary of the Franco-Prussian War — 
Solving the mystery of Bazaine's movements — Hamber and Bracken- 
bury's proof — The " hit" of to-morrow — The fifteenth-century Sir 
Robert Brackenbury — Sir John Pender's steam yacht Electra — 
Mowbray's ' ' Est in conspectu Tenedos " — The value of Wolseley's 
association with Brackenbury — The latter's articles on military 
reform — Office of Commander-in-Chief abolished — Bismarck's desire 
to interview Wolseley — Sir Charles Dilke given Bismarck's opinion 
of Lord Wolseley by the German statesman himself — At Cranbrook, 
Mr. Pandeli Ralli's Surrey country house — " 'Spects I growed "— 
The officer who had nothing to wear — Albert Smith's gent — 
Cremorne Gardens — Altercations with the cabmen — Sir Vincent 
Caillard, the one survivor of the officers trained by Wolseley's 
ablest deputy — The Duke of Connaught's request— Queen Victoria's 
pleasure — Allan Thorndike Rice and Von Moltke — The Prussian 
soldier a subject of conversation — Lady Wolseley and Madame 
Gallifet the best dressed women in Europe — Wolseley's short ten 
minutes' sleep before the battle of Tel-el-Kebir — Lord Spencer and 
the sleepy Prime Minister — Wellington flirts with Madame Quintana 
just before the battle of Orthes, where the Duke was slightly injured 
— The Duke has a short repose before the battle of St. Sebastian — 
Lord Kitchener's preference for gold and silver tea-services to 
swords of honour. 



CHAPTER III 

AMBASSADORS AT CONSTANTINOPLE . . . 154 

School examining at Tunbridge Wells — The young ladies playing 
croquet — The gentleman on the garden bench — The great " Eltchi " 
as seen in the lobby of the House — Debate on the Quadruple 
Alliance — His only speech, as he said, in the House — Crimean War 
caused not by blundering and ignorant miscalculation, but by the 
great ideas and passions long in the air — Russia as the tyrant of 
national liberty under Nicholas I : "A cat whom no one cares to 
bell " — Stratford Canning's rise and progress — Diplomacy no longer 
a close borough — George Canning's cousin and piecis-writer, but no 
friends at Court — A son of the commercial classes — At Eton, not as 
an oppidan but a "tug " — Roughing it in the " Long Chamber " — 
Captain of the school — Gets King's, makes many famous friends, 
but owes more to home lessons than to any of these — Not a persona 
grata to the Czar, but Sultan against Sultan at Constantinople — 
The terror of the Turk and of his own attaches — Granville Murray 

14 



Contents 

PAGE 

rebels — Caricatures his chief in Sir Hector Stubble — The great 
" Eltchi " returns to London — Is the diplomatic oracle of Parlia- 
ment — Retires to Tunbridge Wells — Intellectual and busy to the 
last — Place in social and political nineteenth-century development — 
The great " Eltchi's " great predecessor, and those who have 
since filled his place at Constantinople — Sir William White and 
others. 



CHAPTER IV 

PALMERSTONIANA . , . . . . I76 

The Parliamentary contest at Tiverton — " Cupid " on the Tiverton 
hustings — A bit of Butcher Rowcliffe's mind — " No chaff! " — The 
accustomed irony of Socrates matched by the habitual banter of 
Palmerslon — A visit to the Prime Minister in Downing Street — 
What he looked and said — Repeated constitutionals from the standing 
desk to the inkpot and writing-table — His narrative of the family 
history of the movements ending in putting down " hells" — Cosmos 
out of chaos on the writing-table — Lady Palmerston's invitation 
cards — The "basket trick" — "Next man in" — "Bless my soul, 
how very singular ! " — "I hope you're better" — Man of that age 
sure to have been out of sorts — Palmerston and the Morning Post 
— George Smythe's prediction about the Tory Party — Too busy to 
read the papers — His Tory days — Disgrace at Court — Sir Henry 
Bulwer's coaching in foreign politics and its result — Palmerston with 
those about him in Paris, and the pocket-handkerchief which won't 
fall out — " Big Ben's " two faces — "Janus" or " Palmerston" ? — 
Palmerston as sketched by Disraeli in 1836 — His treatment of 
Talleyrand and its political consequence — The diplomatist in the 
Cambridge House drawing-room, " How like his father ! " — Things 
one would rather not have said — The legendary bottle of brown 
sherry a day — The historical Amontillado — The hard names 
that break no bones but make enemies — " An absolute and Absolutist 
fool" — " The next thing to an idiot" — The elderly gallant in the 
boudoir — " I think it most gentlemanly" — The Schleswig-Holstein 
question understood by three persons only — Lady Palmerston's 
smacking kiss in the lobby — Pam and the Duke — Pam on Queen 
Victoria and the Duchess of Kent — How foreign statesmen cooled 
their heels in Palmerston's waiting-room — What they thought and 
said of it — How to deal with Austrian outrages and to enforce 
English rights in Brazilian waters — The cost of a hatless walk on 
Brocket Terrace — The ruling passion strong in death — " That's 
urticle ninety-eight ; now go on to the next." 



Contents 

CHAPTER V 

PAGE 

ARCADES AMBO" ...... 200 

Palmerston on the Turf — The Palmerstonian pattern in men and 
dress exemplified by W. McCullagh Torrens in his appearance, 
manner, stories (the whisky and the Cabinet), and by Charles 
Skirrow — Other early and mid-nineteenth-century types of both 
sexes — The third Sir Robert Peel on his father's death — Horse- 
dealer Quartermaine brings the three-hundred-guinea Premier round 
to Whitehall Gardens — Sir Robert's refusal of the high figure 
followed by the fatal accident on Constitution Hill — Outside and 
inside Pembroke Lodge — Sir Henry Calcraft's introduction to a 
famous veteran in Church and State — Lord John with his wind- 
gauge under the veranda and amid his historical souvenirs and 
illustrious visitors in his drawing-room — Thomas Carlyle on mis- 
representation of himself and on his own amiability — How the first 
Lord Lytton " being dead, yet speaketh " — Lord John for the Jews 
— What Carlyle thought of Peel, of a certain Anglican service on a 
Scotland-bound steamer, and of the Church of England — H. Calcraft's 
and E. F. Leveson-Gower's review of Grevillian and EUician verdicts 
— Johnny's "calculated indiscretions" and "dirty tricks" — Mr. 
E. F. Leveson-Gower and Lord John — " You will know what to say. 
Good-morning ! " — Charles Greville, George Payne, and " the 
rigour of the game " — Palmerston and Russell compared — Speci- 
mens of Palmerstonian wit and wisdom, and of Russellian aphoristic 
invective in duel with Sir F. Burdett — How Whigs are born not 
made, and Lord John preaches ' ' rest and thankfulness " — Canning 
on the "mud-bespattered Whigs" — Cobbett's vernacular about the 
Whigs in general, and Lord John in particular, as the " shoy-hoys " 
of politics — When statesmen fall out, body-servants come by their 
own — What Sir J. Graham's valet found in his master's pocket, and 
what he did with it — " The Widow's Mite" : how Lord John came 
to be so called — Lord John Russell and Earl Granville compare 
notes about preparatory schools and agree in thinking mutton fat 
detestable — Adolphe Thiers on Viscount Palmerston and Lord 
John Russell — The Palmerstonian laissez-aller in private as 
well as public life, especially in connection with household bills — 
Something savours more of the " hawk " than of the " merry- 
man" — How Palmerston and Russell made friends in 1858 and 
"hated each other more than ever" — The secret truth about 
Palmerston's dismissal from the Foreign Office in 1852 — The real 
cause not so much his " scores off his own bat " as his patronage of 
revolutionary movements abroad and the English Court's preference 
for Legitimacy in general and Austrian Absolutism in particular — 
Palmerston's tit-for-tat with John Russell — The Militia Bill brings 

16 



Contents 

PAGB 

in the Conservatives under Lord Derby, and puts Malmesbury in 
Palmerston's place at the Foreign Office — Malmesbury on himself 
for peace, retrenchment, and reform — His Foreign Office economies 
— His short way with the Foreign Service messengers. 



CHAPTER VI 

FROM SIR ROBERT THE THIRD TO LORD DERBY THE 

FOURTEENTH ...... 227 

A Piccadilly party in the eighties — Enter the third Sir Robert Peel 
— How " Magnifico Pomposo " lays down the law, backs his opinion, 
is proved wrong by the books, and pays up like a man — A modern 
Zimri — From father to son — Sir Robert on his seniors, con- 
temporaries, and men and things in general — Henry Calcraft's 
promise of introducing the writer to " the lodger in Bruton Street " 
fulfilled — How Lady Granville ran the gauntlet of Mr. Greville's 
" horrid " friends — The third Sir Robert's strange adventures and 
imposing appearance — His views about the fourteenth Earl of Derby 
— Nineteenth-century types of politics and play for the Upper Ten — 
Legislation or thimblerigging ? — Political country houses in the 
West and their company — S. T. Kekewich to be lent to the Liberals 
to make them respectable — Sir Stafford Northcote in the bosom 
of his family and neighbours — Sir Stafford's chestnuts — As literate 
as Thackeray could wish, though himself preferring Dickens to 
Thackeray — At home with Shakespeare and the musical glasses — 
On the practical usefulness of the study of Greek — Sides with 
Archbishop Temple against Sir M. E, Grant-Duff — How Priam in 
St. James's Place "waked and looked on drawing his curtains by 
night" — The South Devon "knight of the shire," squire of 
" Peamore," and "the Rupert of Debate " at Eton and afterwards — 
The former introduces the writer to the latter — The fourteenth Lord 
Derby at William IV's coronation : " You have the gout ; must not 
kneel, my lord !" "I really must insist on kneeling, Sir" — The 
writer's call at Knowsley — How the Earl preferred the gout to the 
sherry — The Countess prefers the canal barge to the railway train, 
and the Earl the towing-path to either — " One thing at a time " — 
Newmarket leaves no time for Imperial or home politics — Receives 
a wigging from the Queen and anticipates being " beaten horse and 
foot " — The " ruler of the Queen's Navee " — Chaffed by his chief 
about his visit to Spithead — The ministerial fish-dinner — Lord 
Derby proposes " Sir John Pakington and the wooden spoons of old 
England " — The Earl makes merry about Lord John's "very bad 
company " with Lord and Lady Malmesbury — How for putting on 

17 B 



Contents 

PAGE 

wrong dress he was nearly turned out by the porter — The anecdote 
about the coal-scuttle — Succeeds Duke of Wellington as Oxford 
Chancellor in 1853 — Begins with Latin oratory — Ten years later 
brings down gallery and boxes by his Ciceronian welcome to the 
Princess of Wales — " Ipsa adest " — How and where in dealing with 
the Duke of Argyll Derby learnt the wisdom of the " amuses him and 
don't hurt me " policy. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE POLITICAL ADVENTURES OF THE HOUSE OF STANLEY 

AND OTHERS ...... 248 

Sir John, the medieval founder of the family — Contrast between the 
fourteenth and fifteenth Earls — Lord Stanley's uses at the Foreign 
Office and in Fleet Street — How a man of letters became a Consul — 
The Stanley Civil Service Committee — Enter an Ambassador with 
his dispatch boxes — Lord Lyons on himself and others — How 
Lord Granville worked, and how Bismarck disappeared — Granville 
at the Foreign Office in fact and fiction — How the work was really 
done — Sir Charles Trevelyan's wrinkle and its results — How 
Foreign Secretaries leave their mark — The confessions of a many- 
cousined minister — What the second Lord Granville owed to his 
mother — ^^EnchanUe de vous voir, madame, invitee ou non invitee." 



CHAPTER VIII 

FROM ST. Mary's, winton, to curzon street . . 268 

At Winchester — Old TroUope, young Trollope, and " Bob " Lowe — 
Tait is fined a pounn at the meeting of the Debating Society — Robert 
Lowe as Member for Kidderminster — His article, " The Past Session 
and the New Parliament," in the Edinburgh Review — Lord John 
Russell's wrath at Lowe, whom he regarded as the devil is said to 
look upon holy water — His Trojan horse similes — An albino — 
" The next thing a nigger with his banjo and bones" — " Vers de 
sociiti " — Lowe and Canning's dispatch to Lord Minto — Lord 
Lyons's letter from the British Embassy at Paris — What Lowe 
owed to Disraeli — Mis wrath at the result of the Abyssinian 
War — His rapidity of utterance but not of reading — Disraeli on 
Mrs. Lowe — Mr. Gladstone as a raconteur, ano on the "big, 

big d " — A pupil, together with Henry hdward Manning, 

of Bishop Wordsworth— Lord Goschen's opinion of Gladstone — 

18 



Contents 

PAGfi 

Remarks about the Oriel common-room — At Lady Strangford's — 
Lord and Lady Aberdeen's guest at Dollis Hill — The G.O.M. 
wins the race to the tea-table — His kindness to the outcast 
woman — Disraeli's dislike of Thackeray on account of his burlesque 
"Codlingsby" — He finds Dickens "a delightful man" at the 
Stanhope dinner — The trio, " Popanilla," " Piccadilly," and the 
"New Republic" (Mr. W. H. Mallock) — His aphorisms repro- 
duced by Mrs. Reynolds — " No one is quite well, but I am tolerably 
well " — His advice to the two little boys — Lady Chesterfield — Her 
sister Lady Anson's retort — His gratitude to his wife — At the hotel 
in Bournemouth — His last words, " I am oppressed." 



CHAPTER IX 

A CAMBRIDGE HOUSE HENCHMAN AND ORACLE . . 293 

Abraham Hay ward and the French gentleman on " parasites" — 
The funeral service and mourners — At Blundell's School, Tiverton 
— Articled to an Ilchester solicitor — His lineage and ancestors — The 
lady's opinion of Hay ward : " What a horrid man ! " — Disliked by 
Disraeli — Starts the Law Magazine — Thiers calls on Hayward — 
Their conversation about the alliance which was "hopeless" — 
Bismarck and the Kiel Canal — In the Lyme Pathway case — Roebuck 
excludes him from the Benchers of the Temple — " Hayward, 
Hayward, come back!" — Violet Fane, impatient at first but 
apologetic afterwards — Melbourne on "a big balance at the 
banker's " — At his death-bed — Kinglake with him to the last. 



CHAPTER X 

MID-VICTORIAN TYPES AND FORCES IN CHURCH, STATE, 

SOCIETY, AND LETTERS .... 308 

A. W. Kinglake on travelling in the Crimea then and now — The 
Eton all-night flogging — " Eothen's " luck in coming last — The 
duel that was not fought — The two seconds at the Travellers' 
Club — Lord Tennyson's social mentor — The remnant of the 
Cambridge "Apostles " in London — A distinguished dinner-party at 
Dean Milman's — The host's stories about Frederick the Great — 
What happens when Bishops meet — The life-long social competition 
of Bishop Wilberforce and Cardinal Manning — Archbishop Temple 
recalled as he received the junior clergy in his Exeter days — Cardinal 
Manning's Rivier* in Westminster — The Cardinal on Anglican 

19 



Contents 

PAGB 

sermons and their falling off— How Lord Macaulay was introduced 

in his reading to a "Mr. Sponge" — " dark and smells of 

cheese " — A reminiscence of " Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities " — The 
rise and progress of R. S. Surtees — Whyte-Melville and the Divorce 
Court phrase — Improved on by George Alfred Lawrence — How 
" Guy Livingstone " was written and with what results — The meeting 
of the wits in Air Street, Regent Street — George Lawrence's rise, 
progress, character, and work — Introduced at a Richmond dinner to 
Ouida by Harry Stone — A visit to Francis E. Smedley, the author 
of "Frank Fairlegh" and " Harry Co verdale's Courtship" — How 
the nineteenth-century masters had to wait till the twentieth for their 
full influence on English letters— J. A. Froude and W. E. H. Lecky 
in conversation and in print — Thorold Rogers and the scientific 
historians — E. A. Freeman's musical rides in the Mendip lanes — 
Freeman, Browning, and "Kentish Sir Byng" — Bishop Stubbs 
in the falleniis semita vita — The historian as editor — Froude's 
advice to his " Eraser " writers — Dickens's readings in the West — 
How Thackeray was coming, but thought better of it — Dickens's 
intellectual legacy to his family — Disraeli and Dickens on the 
eloquence of their time — The Dickens school — Edmund Yates, 
his originality and his obligations — Had he an Egeria? — From 
" Edmund "to " Henry " — " Labby " as raconteur and Radical — 
With Grant-Duff at Orleans House — How Don Emelio Castelar 
visits Galway and hears his health proposed in an unknown tongue. 



CHAPTER XI 

ROYALTIES, COURTIERS, AND STATESMEN AT WORK . 349 

How and when the country first knew the Prince Consort — The 
opinion formed of him by his representative contemporaries — 
His services to the Duchy of Cornwall during the minority of the 
Prince of Wales — His Cornwall and Devonshire excursions — 
Royalty and Devonshire cream at a Dartside vicarage — The Prince 
Consort's legacy to his son and grandson — Greek art and literature 
at Marlborough House — King Edward VII as an Oxford and 
Cambridge undergraduate — " Oh ! ruddier than the cherry " in 
Canterbury Quad — Greek lexicon-making on the eve of the Prince's 
residence — H. G. Liddell, of Christ Church — Robert Scott, of ^ 
Balliol — Oxford and Cambridge influences on the culture of the 
coming King — J. E. Thorold Rogers on the Oxford Dictionary — 
The Royal fashion of hard work healthily infectious — How Lord 
Goschen mastered the art and details of naval administration in a 
fortnight — Lord Hartington in his shirt-sleeves at Devonshire 
House administering India, to the accompaniment of the Sunday 

20 



Contents 



PAGE 

morning church bells, with the occasional refreshment of a visitor 
and of the Binomial Theorem — Statesmen of the Churchill line, 
from Bismarck to Winston — How Uncle Salisbury and the great 
Elizabethan Cecils live again in Mr. Arthur Balfour — The first 
Marquis of Abergavenny — How, with Lord Beaconsfield and 
Markham Spofforth as his " man-of-all-work " he recreated the 
Conservative Party, and brought it to victory in 1874 — The first 
Lord Burnham, being also the first of all modern newspaper men — 
The first Lord Rothschild of fact and fiction — Lord Rothschild 
and Lord Randolph Churchill on double surnames. 



INDEX . . . . . . . 379 



21 



GREAT VICTORIANS 



CHAPTER I 

MITRE AND BATON 

A memorable Confirmation address in the old church, Bideford — 
Henry of Exeter's watchword for the newly confirmed, 
"Incorporate" into the Body of Christ, the Church — The 
skull-cap and episcopal robes in the religious light — Wizard 
or priest ? — An address that reaffirms all those doctrines 
whose repudiation by the Brampford Speke clergyman, and 
whose disregard by the Primate, Dr. Howley, had brought 
about Henry's long war against the Gorham heresies and 
his excommunication of the Archbishop of Canterbury — In- 
difference of his diocese to these escapades and local pride — 
His intrepidity as the champion of the reaction to clerical 
medisevalism and the subordination of State to Church — 
Bishop Phillpotts' position, social and political, as a type 
and leader of that movement — His gradual preparation for 
it, first as Tory High Church pamphleteer h la Jonathan 
Swift — Society success began when he became Dean of 
Chester — Famous hosts and guests in and out of London — 
Diocesan work and social progresses in Devonshire — The 
right-hand man, Archdeacon Freeman, more advanced and 
uncompromising than the Bishop himself — The leavening 
of the West with anti-Reformation principles by Mr. 
Prynne at St. Mary's, Plymouth — The devotee who not 
only brushed the church floor but licked it with her tongue 
23 



Great Victorians 

thoroughly to clean it, and made the Bishop smack his lips 
with delight — Social discourses on Dr. Johnson's text about 
the devil as the first Whig — At daggers drawn with Jeffrey, 
Brougham, and all concerned with the Edinburgh Revieiv — 
A Bishop after the Duke of Wellington's own heart — At 
Buckingham Palace with the Duke as Oxford Chancellor to 
congratulate Queen Victoria On her marriage — A little dia- 
logue on punctuality as the politeness of princes — The 
Bishop before the looking-glass at his palace — The episcopal 
sugar-plums and picture-books — The Bishop and the hunt- 
ing parsons — The Bishop's gracious way with an Evangelical 
clergyman about the "Shebbear rogues" — Henry of 
Exeter's table-talk as the rehearsal of his speeches in 
Parliament — The Bishop and Lord Derby understand each 
other about the Canada Clergy Reserves Bill — Landor's 
" Belial Bishop " — Henry stands for damnation, not con- 
demnation — The gamecock of the aristocratic Tories — The 
house party at Mount Edgcumbe and what came of it — 
The conqueror of Waterloo and Henry of Exeter meet — 
The Bishop lionizes the Duke over Exeter Cathedral — The 
Duke's account of it given to the Rev, G. R. Gleig — The 
dark and fearful face in the bath-chair — Henry of Exeter's 
doctrines and influence carried into Somerset by the Rev. 
M. F. Sadler of Bridgwater, who exercised on Archdeacon 
Denison something of the same influence as Archdeacon 
Freeman exercised on Bishop Phillpotts — The Archdeacon's 
brother, the Speaker, on " St. George without the drag-on " — 
The Archdeacon's own account of his conversion to Ritual- 
ism — The Vicar of East Brent and the school inspector — 
The latter welcomed with " Old Daddy Longlegs wouldn't 
say his prayers " — The first Duke of Wellington as a West 
of England worthy — Restoration of the Wellington pillar on 
the Blackdown Hills — The Duke's West of England and 
other progresses — The Duke at Kilve Court, Hartrow Manor, 
and Hatfield — The Duke as I remember him in the West — 
His grace's short way with blackmailers and other people's 
duns — The second Duke's likeness and unlikeness to his 

24 



Mitre and Baton 

father — The same short, sharp, sententious manner of speech 
and of dealing with his fellow-men — How not to become a 
coroner — Sir Henry Irving's train from Strathfieldsaye — A 
dangerously good memory for exposing the plagiarisms in 
travellers' tales and the inconsistencies of fiction-mongers 
about their famous friends, e.g. the Cumbrays and the 
recipient of Bismarck's stolen goods from Gambetta — The 
Duke, George IV, and the cavalry of various nations — 
The Duke as an art patron — " Not going to let Coutts' 
people know what a fool I have been " — How the Duke 
raised a Paris monument in H.B.M. Embassy, 29 Faubourg 
Saint-Honore — The Duke, Lady Catherine Pakenham, and 
the young physician. 

Time, during the early sixties. Scene, the old 
church at Bideford, North Devon. A shortish, 
stoutish, dark-complexioned, and beetle-browed 
old man in episcopal robes, erect and motion- 
less before the ancient altar, addressing some 
ten or a dozen young people whom he has just 
confirmed. The voice as soft as any that can 
ever have been heard beneath that time-worn 
roof, yet penetrating into each remote corner 
as well as now and then quite ringing in its 
articulation. Such were the earnestness and 
strength in which the speaker gave out the 
word serving as the keynote of his discourse. 
Incorporate (into the very Body of Christ), " be- 
cause," he continued, " regenerate by Baptism 
at your infancy, you have now entered into the 
full privileges and responsibilities of that Sacra- 

35 



Great Victorians 

ment." Words like these were charged with 
associations of the struggle between Church and 
State in which a few years earlier Henry of 
Exeter appeared as the Anglo -Catholic cham- 
pion, the restorer of mediaeval prerogatives and 
formularies, when as yet Keble, Newman, and 
Pusey were unknown names. The doctrines now 
condensed into a few sentences for the benefit 
of his Confirmation ordinands were those for 
which he had contended not only in the Gorham 
case, but during the next year had caused him 
first to denounce the Archbishop of Canterbury 
as a heretic, and next formally to excommunicate 
him. This step, of course, involved his repudia- 
tion of the Royal authority and of the Privy 
Council. According to the Bishop that body, 
among its other offences, had ignored the 
distinction between truth and falsehood, and had 
given by their spokesmen, the judges, decisions 
notoriously at variance with facts. 

Of these things nothing was known by the 
younger part of the congregation, and little per- 
haps was remembered about them by their elders, 
who had conducted them to the prelatic presence. 
The personal details noticed by the others in the 
oldest nineteenth-century type of the reaction 
from the evangelical movement begun by the 

Wesleys, were only those which most impressed 

26 



Mitre and Baton 

the present writer in what was not his earliest 
ghmpse of this extraordinary man. A skull- 
cap surmounted the bushy and projecting eye- 
brows, and in the dimly lighted structure, weirdly 
contrasting with the white surplice and with 
the generally low voice, seemed suggestive 
of a mediaeval wizard dropping solemn spells. 
During the first half of his episcopate Dr. Phill- 
potts improved the social success that had come 
to him unsought when Dean of Chester. "Yes, 
whatever the truculence he suppresses so cleverly, 
I like the bitter-sweet flavour of my Henry's 
talk, with the occasional scathing innuendoes, 
uttered in the most mellifluous and softest tone 
of Christian charity. And then the delightfully 
sudden transitions, as it were, from the Mount 
Gerizim of blessing to the Mount Ebal of 
anathema. That is the real secret of the 
attention he gets when speaking in Parliament. 
There is something that reminds one of the 
flavour of an olive after dinner in the change 
from episcopal benediction to the criticism as 
of some * devil's advocate,' but all in the same 
gentle, gracious voice." Such were the verdicts 
heard at club and at dining-table on Henry of 
Exeter in senate and salon. His pen had first 
brought him into notice many years earlier. It 
now continued and completed with an increasing 

27 



Great Victorians 

public what his tongue had begun for the com- 
paratively few. In 1839 his occasional con- 
tributions to the British Critic closely united 
Phillpotts with the leaders of the Oxford Move- 
ment. At the same time his prestige and even 
popularity as a diocesan reached the high-water 
mark among the West of England clergy and 
laity. Hard riding, and, if kept within the 
bounds of decorum, something like hard living 
on the part of his official subjects, were not 
condemned by the Bishop if they went with 
enough of High Toryism and High Church. 
That combination made the Archdeacon of 
Totnes, the historian Froude's father, an epis- 
copal favourite, and his son, J. A. Froude, an 
object of the episcopal wrath, when, having given 
up his deacon's orders in 1848, he changed from 
St. Ninian's biographer in J. H. Newman's series 
into the author of " The Nemesis of Faith," and 
the panegyrist of the eighth Henry and the Pro- 
testant Reformers . But the Bishop found himself 
the idol of the Tory squires and high-flying vicars 
of the west, chiefly from out-doing even Sir 
Charles Wetherell in abuse of the new London 
University and ridicule of its degrees. ^ 

^ To surpass Wetherell's vituperation must have been difficult, 
for Wetherell it was who declared that the scorn and contempt of 
mankind should prevent the new University from granting degrees, 

23 



Mitre and Baton 

The particular vein so effectively character- 
istic of the Bishop's private talk, in the opinion 
of Lord Granville and other good judges then 
leaders in the gilded chamber, first became a 
feature of parliamentary discussion under the 
Aberdeen Coalition Government, 1852-3. "The 
Canada Clergy Reserves Bill," ^ Lord Granville 
told me, " roused Henry of Exeter, at Lord 
Derby's instance, to a series of personal attacks 
upon us for bandits and Chartists, which first 
brought out the Bishop as a parliamentary 
debater." Society did not, in its own words, 
take its Henry too literally, or even seriously. 
It always enjoyed the sport of his outbreaks 
against his pet aversions. Sir Robert Peel, 
Edward Irving, Bishop Blomfield, and Arch- 
bishop Howley. 

Peel's apostasy over Catholic Emancipation 
would surely, he said, be followed by vengeance 
from on hig^h. The first blow that the Bishop 
had the pleasure of witnessing came when, dining 
with the Duke of Sussex, he received the news, 
February 28, 1829, of Peel's defeat at Oxford. 

' The earliest proposal of legislation on this subject had led to 

Burke's quarrel with Fox in 1793. In that year its general eifect 

was to set apart one-seventh of the waste lands for the support 

of the Protestant clergy. Subsequent opposition to it was 

periodically renewed till its final repeal, in spite of all that Lord 

Derby and Bishop Phillpotts could do, by the Aberdeen Ministry 

in 1853. 

29 



Great Victorians 

About the same time Edward living's sermons 
at the Hatton Garden Church attracted the 
whole town. It was even said, no doubt untruly, 
that Phillpotts, carefully disguised, had been 
prompted by curiosity to hear this extra- 
ordinary creature denouncing Peel's surrender to 
the Papists as likely to renew the bonfires and 
butcheries of Smithfield. It was, at least, cer- 
tainly not the voice of Phillpotts which, inter- 
rupting the preacher with a " That is not true," 
provoked the repartee, " It is well when the devil 
speaks from the mouth of one possessed. It 
shows that the truth works." 

" Who and what," at another London dinner- 
table about this time, asked Phillpotts, " is this 
Irving? " 

" The most powerful voice, equally musical 
and tender, the most admirable enunciation, the 
most glorious figure that ever adorned the British 
platform." 

The answer, one who was present told me, 
came from a fellow -diner not previously 
noticed by Phillpotts. This was the just men- 
tioned London prelate, Charles James Blomfield, 
then the ideal specimen of a " Greek play 
Bishop," whose scholarship Phillpotts, later in 
the evening, took an opportunity of showing as 
it was seen by foreign judges, supplementing 

30 



Mitre and Baton 

the exposure with a few biographical notes of 
his own. " In his college library," said Phill- 
potts, " Blomfield had the run of all Porson's 
notes, yet with this help he could only manage 
to produce an edition of y^schylus, denounced 
by all German critics for the looseness of its 
text and the arbitrariness of its commentary." 
" Neither the classics nor Liberalism," continued 
Dr. Phillpotts, " proved profitable. He there- 
fore went over to the Conservatives, became bear 
leader to a cub of quality, and contrived to com- 
bine with his Chester episcopate a benefice of 
great value. The two combined to make him 
the wealthiest pluralist of his time." Sir Robert 
Peel, overhearing this remark, could not restrain 
the comment, " This beats the Gracchi complain- 
ing of sedition," for as a pluralist Henry of Exeter 
easily distanced all the ecclesiastics of his day. 
" A nineteenth-century Swift," was Peel's de- 
scription of the Anglican champion who between 
1809 and 1828 wielded the most formidable 
pen then at work on the High Tory press. The 
Edinburgh Reviewers, who gibbeted him in 
every issue, were more than repaid in their own 
coin. Here is a specimen of the Phillpottian 
invective against the sons of darkness, with whom 
Francis Jeffrey, T. B. Macaulay, and others were 
identified. The then Prebendary of Durham 

31 



Great Victorians 

allowed to each of them' the slime of the serpent 
without any pretensions to its strength. The 
serpent's filth and the venom disgraced and de- 
filed every line on every page. What pleasure 
could there then be in hunting down the loath- 
some creature, through masses of his own pes- 
tilential dirt? Phillpotts on discovering any of 
the Edinburgh gang in the comer of a room 
he had entered always abruptly left it, as it 
was natural should be done by a controversialist 
who had charged the " Blue and Yellow " with 
converting the " Whole Duty of Man " into a 
series of libels by labelling every vice with the 
name of the Squire, the Vicar, and the Church- 
warden. Gradually Henry of Exeter's periodical 
exhibitions and outbreaks in press, in Parliament, 
or on platform were looked for in the same way 
and with the same effect as Lord John Russell's 
indiscretions, whether from calculation or im- 
pulse ; while dinner -tables and drawing-rooms 
discussed, not only in London but throughout the 
land, " Henry of Exeter's last," just as the best 
part of a century later men laughed over the 
pranks and oddities in his own paper. Truths 
in the House of Commons, or among his North- 
ampton constituents, of another Henry, whose 
name was Labouchere. So it went on through 
the militant part of the episcopal course. Henry 

32 



Mitre and Baton 

of Exeter's mission was to bring not peace but 
a sword, and, so far as concerned the lay world, 
less to revive old doctrines than to create a new 
sensation. Most of the paradoxes with which 
the Tractarian leaders fluttered the Evangelical 
dovecotes can be traced back to the Bishop's bolts, 
hurled often from a blue sky. Thus one day 
the Bishop elaborated an argument that the doc- 
trine of the Real Presence was inherent in the 
Thirty -nine Articles. Henry of Exeter's luck 
passed into as much of a proverb as his audacity. 
In the course of his onslaughts upon Archbishop 
Howley, culminating in his " excommunication " 
of the Primate, libel was piled on libel and 
outrage upon outrage. So, too, in his diatribes, 
written or spoken, against the two Earls, Grey 
and his son-in-law Durham. The latter showed 
how he smarted under the sting by bringing the 
matter, with some strong comments of his own, 
before the Upper House. Lyndhurst immediately 
called him to order, with the result that he had 
to apologize to their lordships generally, and the 
Bishop in particular, for the language, which he 
admitted to have been too strong. As for the 
saintlike Primate, formally denounced by Phill- 
potts as anti -Christ, his partisans actually began 
libel proceedings. They came to nothing, and 
all that the rest of the world said or thought 
was, " How like our own Henry ! " 

33 C 



Great Victorians 

Joanna Baillie, though a Presbyterian clergy- 
man's daughter, had made herself the chief 
hostess of celebrities in Church and State during 
the first thirty years of the nineteenth century. 
During his episcopal days, as he had been before 
them, Phillpotts was her frequent guest. At her 
table, April i8, 1828, Phillpotts so dazzled some 
and delighted all that his fellow-diner. Sir Walter 
Scott, exclaimed, " In point of conversation, the 
wigs against the wits for a guinea ! " The array 
of episcopal headgear caused Scott to remind 
Miss Baillie before the evening had come to an 
end of the appropriateness of Crabbe's couplet :— 

Where all above us was a solemn row 
Of priests and deacons — so were all below. 

On this occasion, as on most others, Phillpotts 
held his own against all the crack talkers of 
the time — " Conversation Sharpe," ^ Lord John 
Russell, Jekyll, and Sydney Smith. Sir Walter 
watched it all as a tournament of talk, silently 
appraising the merits of the competitors, and, 
on the whole, in favour of awarding the palm 
to the Dean of Chester, as Phillpotts had just 
become. Only three years had now to pass 
before the Dean of Chester became Bishop of 

^ Richard Sharpe, a wealthy business man, for a short time 
M.P., the maker of one speech and never heard of afterwards. 

34 



Mitre and Baton 

Exeter. He took the first opportunity of giving 
the House a taste of the Phillpottian invective, 
tempered by the Phillpottian irony. But at first 
his hearers were so mnch interested in his per- 
sonal appearance as not to pay full attention to 
his words. 

At the age of fifty-three, when his episco- 
pate began, it was a most striking presence. The 
deep olive complexion, the small regular features 
in the oval face, and the fine forehead, glowed 
with life and health of mind and body, and were 
crowned by a lofty mass of thick black hair, such 
as those who cannot recall Phillpotts may have 
seen in the Cambridge scholar, J. E. B. Mayor. 
The impressive signs of mental and physical 
activity were undiminished even to the threshold 
of old age. Candour and mildness beamed from 
his countenance. The soft, subdued, but per- 
fectly clear voice prepossessed all who heard it 
in his favour. Perfect placidity within and with- 
out formed the chief impression conveyed by 
his whole bearing, and especially by the half- 
closed eyes, which, if at other times they could 
flash nre when he first rose to address the 
assembly were almost hidden by the dropped 
eyelids. He invariably began with a confession 
of his reluctance to trouble their lordships, and 
an assurance that he would not long trespass on 

35 



Great Victorians 

their attention. The smoothness and ease with 
which ideas and arguments fell from his lips 
showed the complete mastery of his subject and 
the care with which facts, figures, dates, and 
relevant details of all kinds had been prepared. 
He invariably prefaced his remarks with some 
self -deprecatory sentences. He spoke "under 
correction," and with a painful feeling of his 
own unfitness for addressing their lordships on 
the particular matter in hand , But duty called ; 
who was he that he should disobey? The par- 
ticular duty that first familiarized the Chamber 
with his debating and oratorical methods was 
that of co-operating with the fourteenth Earl of 
Derby, the Conservatives generally, and the 
Peelite malcontents in particular, to throw out 
Lord Aberdeen's Coalition Ministry. The great 
Earl, a sportsman who never quite lost his fancy 
for an obsolete pastime, spoke of his ally as a 
" lawn-sleeved gamecock," to be kept at all 
costs in good humour^ and to be humoured 
equally as regards temper and health. The 
caution was not unneeded, for the pride of Henry 
Phillpotts at least equalled that of all the Stan- 
leys. On one occasion the Earl treated his Henry 
in rather a cavalier fashion. Phillpotts was up 
in arms at once, would not open his lips in the 

debate, and left the House without saying a 

36 



Mitre and Baton 

word. The Tory chief never repeated the in- 
discretion, and the two men planned and executed 
their little conspiracies for the future on perfectly- 
equal terms. Even in this, secularly, his most 
aggressive period, the Bishop had surprisingly 
few personal enemies. It was Derby himself 
who explained their absence by saying, " All 
Englishmen at heart like sport. Such sport as 
the episcopal bench now gives them they never 
knew before." Whatever abuse might be heard 
of Henry came nearly always from one and the 
same quarter. And Walter Savage Landor did 
not vent more Billingsgate against Phillpotts 
than against the poet Wordsworth. Addressing 
a friend in the Exeter diocese, he characteristic- 
ally exclaimed, " God preserve you from your 
Belial Bishop ! " 

" I think," went on Landor, " I am beginning 
to understand Satan better than I did since 
coming across not only Henry but one of his 
pet priests named Wackerbarth, who elevates the 
Host, crosses himself, forgets the burning of 
heretics, and condenses the Phillpottian theology 
into a few explanatory words better than was 
ever done by his master, after the following 
fashion : ' Those who object to the persecution 
and extermination of heretics, do ipso facto 
charge all theological doctrine and belief with 

37 



Great Victorians 

being uncertain and dubious. For God will 
assuredly punish the rejection of doctrines essen- 
tial to salvation. Equally sure is it that the 
Church knows what these doctrines are. Does it 
not, then, follow that those who try to withdraw 
people from this faith should be treated as we 
treat a mad dog loose in the streets of the city ? ' " 
" Our Henry," in public and private usually 
so gracious and mild of tongue, when he thought 
the occasion required it, or some weaker brother 
had wrongly shrunk from the strong word him- 
self, could use a " big, big d " with great 

effect. The Bishop, I heard from one who wit- 
nessed the scene, formed one of the congregation 
in a Torquay church. The meek and gentle 
incumbent^ who happened to be officiating, had 
a conscientious dislike of strong language in the 
Communion Service ; he therefore substituted 
" condemnation " for the more awful word. The 
Bishop reared his head, and as he knelt with the 
rest of the congregation roared out " damna- 
tion." In most, if not all, the local stories of 
the Bishop as regards his diocesan relations, the 
hunting parson, throughout the whole of the nine- 
teenth century a peculiarly indigenous Devon- 
shire growth, played a prominent part, and was 
generally represented either by one of the Rev. 
John Russell's set, if not by the famous " Jack " 

38 



Mitre and Baton 

Russell himself. That clerical Nimrod's ad- 
mirably executed biography so runs over with 
characteristic stories of this kind that to this 
volume it will be safer to refer the reader than 
to risk the infliction on him of anything that it 
may have familiarized him with already. At a 
great West of England country house, I believe 
Mount Edgcum'be, some one spoke about the 
wealth of the clergy, and implied a disregard 
for the scriptural warning of its being " easier 
for a camel to go through a needle's eye than 
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." 
" Rather," at last said Henry, " consider the im- 
pediments to salvation of which the clergy 
relieve you. To protect us from violence the 
soldier falls by the sword. The physician is 
of all men the least careful about his health. 
If I were to die worth half a million I should 
only be the absorbent of a poison that would 
have swollen up ten men to a needle eye of 
impracticability . ' ' 

Older than Pusey, Newman, and all the Oxford 
Tractarians by between twenty and thirty years, 
Phillpotts, as an Anglican type, marks less the 
reaction from the Wesleys and the Evan- 
gelical revival than a harking back to the 
medieval doctrine, discipline, and rites of the 
Stuart age, when no one foresaw the coming 

39 



Great Victorians 

violence of the Tudor " Deformation." Thorough 
and with the same objects in view, was, he never 
concealed, as much the watchword of his policy 
as it had been that of Laud and Strafford. 
Phillpotts did not so much denounce the Tudor 
settlement of Church and State as altogether 
ignore it, tracing his sacerdotal and episcopal 
pedigree from a date three or four centuries 
earlier than Gregory the Great's despatch of 
Augustine, or any other Bishop, to these shores. 
Such intercourse with the Vatican no doubt had 
its usefulness here ; it no more created the 
Church of England than it did the English 
monarchy. As a Somersetshire man the Bishop's 
imagination and reason were appreciably affected 
by the prehistoric connection of Glastonbury with 
a whole line of primitive Churchmen. These 
were his " Fathers." The surest and shortest 
way to his favour was for some of his clergy 
to expend real research and thought on empha- 
sizing and illustrating that view. His favourite 
chaplain. Archdeacon Ereeman, owed his in- 
fluence with him almost entirely to a book of 
great learning, in which all this had been done. 
Next to Freeman, the henchman specially com- 
mended to his chief by an enthusiastic adoption 
of these ideas was one of the Plymouth clergy 
named Prynne, who made the Bishop smack his 

40 



Mitre and Baton 

lips with delight by relating how a lady of his 
own congregation, not content with brushing the 
church floor, had no sooner swept than she 
insisted on licking it with her tongue. 

The stories once most widely circulated about 
Henry of Exeter among his own people generally 
bring his rougher side into prominence . He had, 
however, his gentler moods. One of his ordi- 
nation candidates had to preach a sermon before 
him. The Bishop observed that a young lady 
in the congregation seemed specially interested 
in the discourse. The preacher, summoned to 
the episcopal library for the verdict on his per- 
formance, found the great man visibly dissatis- 
fied. " And, my lord," he stammered out, 
"some of those who heard it liked it so much." 
" Meaning," rejoined Henry, " the young lady 
to whom you are engaged. Now," he went on, 
"let me give you a piece of advice. Don't 
believe any compliments she pays you before 
you are married, and after you are married be 
sure to profit by all her criticism." When, how- 
ever, the young man got to his fiancee's abode, 
he found the first wedding present had come 
from his diocesan. One of his older clergy, 
who had long held the living of Shebbear 
(locally pronounced " Shebber"), was an Evan- 
gelical saint. " Shebber rogues " indicated the 

41 * 



Great Victorians 

local opinion of his parishioners. The incum- 
bent, talking with the Bishop, referred to this 
term of reproach. " I am sure, Mr. Foulkes," 
came the gracious comment, " that under you 
they must have outgrown it." Henry of Exeter 
owed his mitre to the Duke of Wellington as 
Prime Minister. The Duke as Chancellor walked 
side by side with Phillpotts in the Oxford Pro- 
cession from Pall Mall to Buckingham Palace 
to present the congratulatory address on Queen 
Victoria's marriage, Eebruary lo, 1840. The 
admission to the Royal presence was a little de- 
layed. The Bishop seemed a trifle impatient; 
the Duke said something about the pressure on 
the Sovereign's time. " May I," rejoined the 
Bishop, " recall to your Grace a motto, which, I 
think, you once said should be hung in the halls 
of all sovereigns ? It is the French motto, 
L exactitude est la polite sse des Rois.'' 

From the Great Exhibition year, 185 1, on- 
wards, London drawing - rooms and clubs 
abounded in little anecdotes like these. Echoes 
of them reached the uttermost corners of the 
western diocese, coupling so habitually the ducal 
sharp sententiousness with the prompt episcopal 
repartee that the names of the two began to 
suggest each other, and the admiring Devon- 
shire clergy of whatever school almost doubted 

42 



Mitre and Baton 

which was the greater man of the two— the 
conqueror of Napoleon or the champion, against 
Primate^ Privy Council, and Monarch, of medi- 
ccvalism in Anglican doctrine and ordinance. 
At the Athenaeum Club the Bishop met Talley- 
rand, and intrepidly essayed opening conversa- 
tion in French with the diplomatist. Talleyrand 
wandered off, and, meeting Bernal Osborne, 
referred to the episcopal remarks on interna- 
tional politics. "His lordship," he said, "dis- 
played a courage which surprised me, even in 
him^ by delivering some half a dozen words on 
a subject about which he knew little in a lan- 
guage of which he knew nothing." Abraham 
Hay ward, however, to whom I am indebted for 
this story, and who overheard most of the talk, 
said that the Bishop of Exeter's argument turned 
upon a forgotten point in the negotiations that 
created the Kingdom of Belgium, was expressed 
in Erench, if not highly elegant or idiomatic 
yet perfectly intelligible, and was admitted by 
Talleyrand himself to have piut in their true light 
and perspective some details of the transaction 
often misrepresented^, forgotten, or ignored. 

Most of the stories about the Bishop locally 
circulated till a comparatively recent date are 
apocrypha:!. He never suffered, as it was once 
said he did, any of his name or blood to come 

43 



Great Victorians 

tO' want. For the rest, to speak once more from 
my own experiences, very early as these were, 
I can distinctly recall being taken to the Exeter 
Palace. One side of the library was lined with 
bookshelves, so arranged that the Bishop could 
at once see and fetch for himself any volume 
he wanted, without the help of a ladder or chair, 
by standing on a light movable little platform, 
specially made for the purpose. Opposite the 
books, on the other side, mbst of the space was 
taken up by an immense looking-glass ; in this 
the Bishop could see clearly reflected every 
feature and movement of his visitors ; and it 
was in a convenient position for himself as 
regards this mirror that he had a chair placed 
for Gorham, the newly appointed Vicar of 
Brampford Speke, while, taking his place beside 
that clergyman, he examined him as to his views 
about baptismal regeneration. This article of 
furniture answered other purposes. 

His impressive demeanour, well -moulded 
features, and especially his broad, projecting 
forehead, gave Phillpotts a very noticeable 
appearance. Till past middle age he had an 
abundant crop of black, strong hair, bulging out 
into something like a little brush at the back of 
his head. In these personal endowments the 
Bishop took a modest pride. Having carefully 

44 



Mitre and Baton 

prepared his orations at his table, he rehearsed 
them aloud before the looking-glass, with all the 
action and gestures that were to adorn and em- 
phasize his periods. At one end of this chamber 
I was placed at a table while those who had 
brought me were conversing at the other end with 
our host. A picture album had been placed 
within my reach to keep me quiet, and presently 
Henry of Exeter brought me a little packet of 
sugar -plums, by way of refreshment, while I 
looked at the pictures. Many of these were 
portraits of celebrities then living, whose faces 
and names I sometimes recognized from having 
seen at home water-colour drawings of quadrilles 
in which they figured. Such were Lady Jersey, 
her daughter, Lady Clementina Villiers, Lord 
Lansdowne, with other members of the Bowood 
group, including Bernal Osborne and Abraham 
Hayward, whom in the flesh I was afterwards 
to know so well. Sir Fitzroy and Lady Kelly, 
Lady Molesworth, Lord and Lady Lyndhurst, 
the Bishop's particular lay intimates, Hudson 
Gurney, and a friend of his own cloth and 
rank, the Bishop of Chichester, who char- 
acterized, as the best piece of episcopal invec- 
tive he had ever heard, Phillpotts' attack upon 
the Whig Irish Education Bill in 1834. The 
collection, I afterwards heard, contained most 

45 



Great Victorians 

of those whom the Bishop really liked to know, 
including also a well-known Italian of quality, 
then much in vogue. Prince Cimatelli ; Phill- 
potts had first m'et him as an honorary member 
at the Athenaeum in 1831. That was the second 
year, the first being 1829, in which the Bishop 
bewailed the ruin of the Constitution in the 
country. Quoth the prelate, "It is a sad thing. 
Prince, that you should be here at such an un- 
happy moment." " Bishop," came the reply, 
" I rejoice that I have seen already two events 
in England, and hope soon to witness a third. 
I have watched Catholic Emancipation becoming 
law, followed by the overthrow of the Tories. 
I now hope soon to see the passing of the 
Reform Bill." 

The late Lord Granville, who knew his Henry 
of Exeter by heart, described to me his attitude 
in the Upper House, at two different periods 
of his life, when about to make a speech. " He 
seemed not so much to sit on the episcopal 
bench as to crouch. Suddenly some expression 
he heard, or thought that came into his mind, 
stung him like an insect attacking a lion. In 
a moment he did not so much rise to address 
as with a little bounce spring at his prey. All 
the force and energy of his being were com- 
pressed into that movement. This was the 

46 



Mitre and Baton 

Bishop at his prime. When his health gave 
trouble^ or he felt the approach of age, he still 
crouched with the same vigilant, keen look, but 
instead of the elastic leap to his feet, pulled 
himself wearily up." 

In his see Henry of Exeter faded slowly out. 
He was approaching fourscore and ten when he 
left his palace for ever, to be seen for the future 
only by those who, walking on the Torquay sea- 
front, met a bath -chair slowly drawn along that 
portion of it forming Babbacombe Bay. A look 
inside revealed a dark and dreadful counten- 
ance set in a wild frown, pale knotted hands 
clutching at both sides of the chair. The whole 
apparition so terrified any children who hap- 
pened to behold it that with a shriek they 
hurried off, tearful and trembling, as at the sight 
of a Satanic vision. 

Nor was Bishop Phillpotts the only type of 
a great general of the Church Militant supplied 
by the West of England during the first half of 
the Victorian age. Two others may be repre- 
sented here, as they still live in the present 
writer's mind. One of these, throughout the 
whole East Brent region, used to be as well 
known as the reservoir created or cleared by 
him for the health and comfort of his village. 
The Bishop of Exeter, as has been recalled, in his 

47 



Great Victorians 

efforts to bring back doctrine and worship to 
their pre-Reformiation point, found his most 
effective agent in his chaplain, Freeman. The 
Archdeacon of Taunton received effectual help 
of the same kind from one of the clergy within 
his dominion, a greater scholar and theologian 
than himself, M. F. Sadler, Vicar of Bridgwater. 
Arehdeacon Denison reserved all open sym- 
pathy with the Ritualists till, in 1865, a corre- 
spondence with Archbishop Longley convinced 
him. that under existing conditions in the Church 
of England by law established nothing like a 
spirit of cordial unanimity among various parties 
could be hoped for. The attack from within had 
already begun ; his own time was nearly out. 
The Archdeacon, therefore, saw nothing for it 
but that the schools and factions should fight to 
a finish. The wealth chiefly acquired from his 
early immensely valuable pluralities raised Phill- 
potts to the station of a prince of the Church. 
Archdeacon Denison's high connections, family 
wealth, and healthy English tastes placed him 
as a clergyman among squires. They also made 
him something of a squire among clergymen, 
and gave him social pre-eminence even in that 
part of Somerset where " Squarsons " of high 
degree used not to be rarities. 

All this time his breeding, tact, and manifest 

48 



Mitre and Baton 

honesty preserved all his personal friends in the 
neighbourhood, even among those who were 
farthest removed from his views. To the end he 
remained a Somerset worthy, as Phillpotts was in 
his way a Devonian hero. His brother, the then 
Speaker, happily named him "St. George without 
the drag-on." The best stories about or against 
him were those told by himself to his friends in 
his lifetime, and recorded, no doubt, in his auto- 
biography. Such were his experiences with the 
school inspector, as detestable in his sight as 
the conscience clause itself, only because he per- 
sonified the principle of State control. When, 
therefore, this official visited the East Brent 
schools, the children with one accord began to 
sing- 
Old Daddy Longlegs wouldn't say his prayers, 
Take him by the left leg and throw him down the stairs. 

The intruder disappeared, but only to lunch off 
cold chicken and sherry with the Archdeacon 
at the Vicarage. 

From the two clerical types most character- 
istic of those nineteenth -century years through 
which they lived, one naturahy passes to the 
great Captain already seen in company with the 
great Churchman. Archdeacon Denison be- 
longed by residence and office to the same 

49 D 



Great Victorians 

county as that containing the birthplace of 
Bishop Phillpotts, and producing the stock from' 
which the Duke of Wellington sprang. From 
the lips of his son and successor came to me 
the highly characteristic sayings of the great 
man himself, presently to be given, and, so far 
as I know, for the first time, in print. The 
second Duke of Wellington never talked much 
about his father's Somerset connection or his 
other West of England associations, some 
growing out of his office as Governor of 
Plymouth (1819-29). That reserve always 
struck me as due to the neglect by its inhabit- 
ants of the monument to the hero and sage who 
took his title from the place. This obelisk^ 
erected at the foot of the Blackdown Hills 
two years after the battle of Waterloo, had 
fallen lamentably out of repair. In January 
1853 the pillar was restored on the initiative and 
through the combined efforts of the Slade family 
at Montys Court and the first Duke's, as also 
the second Duke's, personal friend, my uncle. 
Since then the second Duke com'plained that 
it was once more in danger of falling to pieces. 
" The Somersetites," he said to me, " have a 
strange way of honouring my father's memory ; 
but as for you, only your uncle saved the pillar 
from collapsing by what he said and did near 

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Mitre and Baton 

half a century ago, and because you are his 
nephew I am glad to have you for my friend." 
The speech thus referred to by the second 
Duke attracted much attention, not only on 
account of its object, but of the terse, classical 
diction, which caused the late R. C. Jebb, when 
Professor of Greek at Cambridge, to render it 
himself into Greek and Latin, and to set a 
portion of it for translation into Greek at one 
of the examinations he held. The Wellington 
district witnessed in the eighteenth century the 
beginnings of the great fortunes in store, for 
the Duke's ancestors ^ settled in that part of 

^ A footnote rather than the text seems suitable for summarizing 
the chief steps in the advance which changed the Wesleys, as the 
name was then written, from an inconsiderable family in Somerset 
to one of territorial status in Meath. First came intermarriage 
with the Cowleys or Colleys, beginning their Irish wealth and 
importance. Subsequently to this Lord Maryborough, afterwards 
Lord Mornington, while still a young midshipman, received the 
offer of a valuable Irish property from a distant kinsman of the 
Poles, on condition that he left the Navy and made his bene- 
factor's house his home. But at the time of this offer the 
outbreak of the Seven Years War saw the lucky lad on active 
service against the French. He therefore refused the condition ; 
like his relations, he supposed nothing more would be heard of 
the good fortune he had so narrowly missed. Presently, however, 
the old gentleman died, declared in his will that his young friend's 
conduct only increased his admiration, and left him a large slice, 
if not the whole, of the Pole property. Wellesley, it now turned 
out, was the primitive and correct patronymic. Such discoveries, 
it may be remarked in passing, have not been uncommon with 

51 



Great Victorians 

the county from early times. Hartrow Manor 
during the fifties was visited by many celebri- 
ties, amongst them the great Sir Robert iPeel 
and Lord Lyndhurst. Kilve Court, some way 
outside the Wellington region, belonged, during 
a great part of the nineteenth century, to the 
great Duke's Waterloo comrade. Colonel Francis 
Luttrell,! constantly in those days the great 
man's host. Here, in my very earliest days, 
I first set eyes upon the conqueror of 
Napoleon. A school treat was being given in 
the grounds. The great man now and then 

Somerset houses, as of course with a good many others. The latest 
Somerset instance is perhaps that of the much respeqted Somerset 
squire who only reverted to the ancient and demonstrably correct 
orthography when he wrote Everard in place of the Evered so 
long and agreeably connected with Hill House, near Bridgwater, 
and Stone Lodge close to Dulverton. The first Lord Mornington 
married the first Viscount Dungannon's daughter, thus connecting 
the Wellesleys with the Downshire, Salisbury, and Talbot families. 
The distinction won by her two sons, the Duke of Wellington and 
the Marquis Wellesley, made this highly endowed woman, when 
incessantly cheered by the crowd on driving to Westminster, 
exclaim to her companion. Lord Cowley, " So much for the 
honour of the mother of the Gracchi ! " 

^ Francis Fownes Luttrell, third son of John Luttrell of 
Dunster Castle, M.P. for Minehead, by Mary, eldest daughter 
of Francis Drewe, Grange, Devon, was Lieutenant-Captain in the 
I St Foot Guards at Waterloo ; he left the service 1825, after being 
Lieutenant-Colonel in the Grenadiers, having married his cousin, 
Miss Drewe, and become owner not only of Kilve Court but of 
Wootton in the same county. At Kilve he lived till his death 
in 1862. 

52 



Mitre and Baton 

walked a little on the lawn^ but for the most 
part sat on a chair placed for him on a gravel 
path, near the front door. The feature that im- 
pressed me even more than the historic aquiline 
nose was the beautiful, very round, very large 
blue eyes, which seemfed to take in everything 
at a glance. Before the party broke up a 
clerical voice gave out something between a 
song and a hymn with the refrain — 

God bless the squire and all his rich relations, 
And keep us poor people in our proper stations. 

" By all means," grimly murmtired the Duke 
as a chorus solo, "if it can be done." 

Other country houses in the north and east 
as well as west contain records of ducal visits 
paid about the same time as those to Sir Walter 
Scott at Abbotsford with Henry of Exeter for 
fellow-guest. The earliest and most eventful of 
these occasions had been the stay at Ravens - 
worth Castle in 1827, the date at which Gode- 
rich's growing inability to hold office as 
Canning's successor made it certain that the 
Duke would soon be at the head of affairs again. 
Roman Catholic Emancipation had, of course, 
been long in the air ; the Duke himself was 
beginning to think it would have been better 
to have given Canning a free hand and have 

53 



Great Victorians 

done with the matter than to have hunted him 
out of office and of Hfe for refusing to give it 
up ; for at Ravensworth he told his host and 
Sir Walter Scott that the odiUni theologicum, 
pointing to Phillpotts, then only a pamphleteer- 
ing parson, might put too great a strain even 
on Toryism. About the same time the Duke, 
going still farther north, repeated the visit to 
Reay, on which he had been accompanied by 
Sir Walter Scott in 1807, and again in 18 14. 
At Lord Reay's an excursion was made to the 
cave of Uamh Smowe. Here one of the party 
narrowly escaped drowning by a fall into the 
water, but presently reappeared, swimming 
strongly, and causing Scott or Lockhart to 
repeat, for the Duke's amusement, a quatrain 
in a then popular song — 

When Bibo thought fit from this world to retreat, 
As full of champagne as an egg's full of meat, 
He waked in the boat, and to Charon he said, 
" Come row me now back, for I am not yet dead." 

West or east, south or north, in country or 
town, the polite world throughout the fifties, 
like, for that matter, the entire country, indeed 
the whole Western world, thought of little but 
how personally to honour the deliverer and, as 
he next became, the sage of Europe. 

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Mitre and Baton 

In and about Grosvenor Square folding doors 
were opened, curtains and footlights arranged ; 
the whole floor suddenly changed itself into a 
theatre in order that the hero of Waterloo might 
see the young people of the house and their 
friends enact scenes from his favourite French 
plays. The performance was sometimes varied 
by some young lady with a good voice obliging 
with a song. 

In no vocalist did the Duke take such delight 
as in Miss Jervis ; she was Lord St. Vincent's 
daughter, always asked wherever the Duke went, 
and seated, as a matter of course, next to him 
at table. Such little displays of grandpaternal 
gallantry and homage were seen nowhere more 
prettily than at his favourite home -counties 
resort, Hatfield, during the second Marquis of 
Salisbury's time. On the Kilve Court lawn the 
children, whose looks betrayed to the old warrior 
the expectation of something, were more than 
satisfied when the venerable hand, slowly enter- 
ing a pocket, brought from it a handful of 
coppers to be scrambled for. Any reader of 
these lines who can recall the incident will re- 
member that a minute or two afterwards a 
small girl, picking up a copper, dropped its 
donor a low curtsy, so much approved by him 
as to secure the child a sixpenny or fourpenny 

55 



Great Victorians 

bit. The coin might have been seen in a 
Quantock cottage, preserved as an heirloom long 
after its giver, its first possessor^ and all per- 
sonally concerned with the story had passed 
away. On higher levels it sometimes ran to 
sovereigns and half-crowns. Among the Hat- 
field curios there might once be seen a gold or 
a silver piece bestowed, in succession to the 
christening cup, upon his godson and namesake, 
who just forty years later was to become Prime 
Minister. So, at least, ran the accepted Hert- 
fordshire version of the facts ; it derived further 
possibility from the Duke's devotion to the late 
Lord Salisbury's second and favourite sister. 
Lady Blanche Cecil, his interest in her marriage 
to James Maitland Balfour, of Whittingehame, 
and his declared wish to becomie the first child's 
sponsor. 

After he laid down the sword, " the Duke for 
thirty years more was the sage of Europe ; and 
in every civil and political effort he took a part 
which the wisest had wished for, but which none 
save he bore the power to execute — ^the over- 
coming of faction, which some call party, and 
the setting at naught his formerly expressed 
opinions, even for a time his own reputation, 
that he might himself consult the necessity of 
his Sovereign as well as promote his honour and 

56 



Mitre and Baton 

that of his country." ^ At the beginning of my 
Oxford days there were still living many who 
related to me how the Duke, then Chancellor 
of the University, had saved the situation just 
three decades ago, when the consort of William 
IV visited the place. Dean Gaisford then ruled 
Christ Church, and showed no disposition to 
incur inconvenience for the Royal lady's sake. 
He had bluntly written to the Court official. 
Lord Howe, that there were no suitable rooms 
vacant in the house. If, however, her Majesty 
would wait, she should be received at the 
Deanery, and her suite should be put up 
at some of the canons' residences. Queen 
Adelaide could not or would not postpone 
her arrival. Something like a scandal arose 
when she descended with those about her 
at the Angel Inn — a site now covered by the 
new Examination Schools. The Duke's quick 
eye, however, had seen his opportunity. Before, 
as it might have been thought, the incident got 
wind, he was on the spot, lionizing the Queen 
everywhere, seeing that the illuminations, 
dinners, and so forth, went off without any 
hitch. As a consequence the Queen received 
real delight from her reception, and when 
leaving for London let it be known that she 
^ From Sherborne Journal, January 20, 1853. 
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Great Victorians 

had never enjoyed anything more in her hfe. 
With equal dexterity, so I used to hear from 
the academic veterans who survived till the 
beginning of my Oxford days, in 1834 the Duke 
had recognized the then obscure germ of 
University Liberalism by writing to the heads 
of houses, frankly confessing that he and his 
friends found great difficulty as regards the sig- 
nature of the Thirty-nine Articles by matricu- 
lating undergraduates. He therefore expressed 
a hope that Convocation might see its way 
to sanction the repeal of subscription — though 
vainly, as it turned out, because a motion to that 
effect failed immediately afterwards by an im- 
mense majority. The Duke's attitude in this 
matter, as in that of Catholic Emancipation, 
recalled to not a few the words quoted above 
from a speech much talked of at the time of 
restoring the Blackdown obelisk. 

Before passing to certain Wellingtoniana 
coming to me from the friends or relations who 
saw much of the Duke at their houses or his own, 
I may give the substance of a home letter from 
one of these, who visited the place where the 
great battle was fought only a month or two 
afterwards. The two armies met in a large 
open rye-field. Throughout the summer and the 
early autumn afterwards the whole plain had 

58 



Mitre and Baton 

been reaped, and was covered with straw, while 
the atmosphere remained pestilential in the ex- 
treme. All the other relics of the combat were 
more than a hundred pieces of French cannon 
and a heap of soldiers' caps that the inhabitants 
had not thought worth the trouble of removing. 
This though during the night of June i8th they 
had stripped many English bodies of their 
clothes. As regards the never-to-be-forgotten 
Duchess of Richmond's ball on the evening 
before, the Duke was the first British officer 
in the room to hear of Bonaparte's being within 
fifteen miles of Brussels. Contrary^ it seems, 
to the generally received account, " he whis- 
pered hurriedly to " no one, said not a word, put 
the dispatch in his pocket, disappeared for a 
couple of hours ; during that absence he drew 
up on paper all his dispositions. He then re- 
entered the room and danced all night. The 
one precedent for this was proudly found by 
the present writer's West of England compatriots 
in Sir Francis Drake's treatment of the tidings 
that the Armada had been sighted : " Plenty 
of time to finish our game of bowls first and 
fight the Spaniards afterwards." But during the 
fray itself, did Drake supply any parallel for 
that amazing calmness of the Duke, who, on 
the French coming up to attack the Eng;lish 

59 



Great Victorians 

squares, actually laughed? Such were the great 
Captain's qualities, which were worth more than 
whole battalions to his army, and that, on the 
great day now recalled, more than once snatched 
victory out of the jaws of defeat. " It was 
twenty to one we lost the battle, sim'ply because 
those were the odds in favour of the Duke being 
killed." So ran the experts' verdict, brought 
back by travelling experts from their post- 
Waterloo tour, and handed down to one's own 
times. The fear had been, not that the enemy's 
horse or foot could have broken the English 
squares, but that the 250 French cannons would 
annihilate the whole British force, the Duke 
himself included. There had gone about a 
report that in those squares Wellington placed 
himself for safety. He did nothing of the kind. 
When it was all over he said, " If the finger of 
God was on any man, it was on me that day." 
At the hottest points of the battle he exposed 
himself with systematic coolness to encourage 
his soldiers. When asked about the conduct 
of our allies, he parried the question much in 
the same way as he did a certain well-known 
appeal of the Prince Regent about his imag- 
inary distinction at Waterloo : " You know, 
Arthur, I was there, don't you?" "I have 
repeatedly heard your Royal Highness say 

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Mitre and Baton 

so." So, as regards the non-British troops 
engaged. " I have heard," responded the 
ducal oracle, " that the Dutch and others 
ran away in part of the line and behaved 
well elsewhere, also, had we been worsted, 
Belgians, Brunswickers, and the rest would have 
turned against us. The truth, however, is, when 
there is fighting for a mile at the same time, 
no individual engaged knows more than those 
in England of what is passing more than a 
hundred yards to his right or left." " The 
Duke," I remember hearing it said by one who 
had just returned from a visit to him at Walmer, 
" believes, like Napoleon, in his star, and in the 
midst of carrying his life in his hands wrote 
to me to inquire whether he could rent 
' Donnington,' Lord Moira's Leicestershire 
place, for the next hunting season." 

Cruda deo virldlsque senectus. The weak- 
ness of age showed itself in the rising and falling 
of the jaw according to the movements of his 
horse when, during his Walmer period, he rode 
" Copenhagen " with the harriers or cantered 
elsewhere over the turf. But persons who were 
much about the Duke in those days, as well as 
his own son, have assured me he showed scarcely 
any symptoms of physical decline till he had 
gone more than half-way through the seventies. 

6i 



Great Victorians 

The kindest and best of my old friends, who 
wrote " Eothen " and " The Invasion of the 
Crimea." may not have been a scientific critic 
of tactics and strategy, after the new military 
pattern at the Universities to-day, but he was 
a close and accurate observer ; he had not gone 
through the labour of collecting materials on 
the spot for his great book without gathering 
a rudimentary acquaintance with the art of war. 
In the same way Abraham Hayward's sharp 
wit, strong brain, ubiquitous experience, and 
sense of responsibility in his most casual utter- 
ances made his opinion at least worth some- 
thing on other subjects than letters and politics.. 
Both these men habitually saw the Duke in 
1848, the year of the Chartist outbreak. His 
mind, they agreed, had never been more vigor- 
ous and alert. His scheme for the defence of 
London did not, in completeness, wisdom, and 
rapidity, fall below the standard of his Penin- 
sular or Belgian strategy. To such effect King- 
lake expressed himself when dining at my house 
on one occasion, the two other guests being 
Hayward and the late Sir Henry Brackenbury ; 
to the last of these he appealed for correction 
or confirmation of his views. " I entirely," said 
Brackenbury, " agree with Mr. Kinglake that 
the defence of London should be read as care- 

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Mitre and Baton 

fully by military students as any other passages 
of Wellingtonian strategy." 

For these reasons it may be worth while to 
give here an idea of the Duke's dispositions, 
such as I owe to the combined good offices of 
Brackenbury and Kinglake. On April 9, 1848, 
the Ministers expected an immediate attack on 
the Government offices. The Duke therefore 
decided that the Thames bridges must be occu- 
pied, and the mob kept to Southwark and 
Lambeth. Suddenly the Duke heard Keargus 
O'Connor might choose Primrose Hill for his 
battleground, but such a possibility had been 
reckoned with by the Duke, who, it should be 
added, carried everything through without mili- 
tary display. He and his staff went about 
through the length and breadth of the capital 
in plain clothes ; while, in Kinglake's character- 
istic phrasing, his aides-de-camp were disguised 
as common -looking fellows that they might pass 
in the streets without attracting attention, and 
this though in ordinary times the Duke insisted 
on punctilio in externals and in routine gener- 
ally. Thus when Prime Minister he always 
reached his official residence early, hung up his 
greatcoat and hat before travelling round the 
expanse of tables for the various letters or 
boxes, and so mastered the papers submitted 

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Great Victorians 

for his sanction. Incidents and traits of this 
kind could not, for chronological reasons, form 
part of the writer's own experience. They were, 
however, in every case those which the sight 
or name of the Duke called up to the mind of 
the best placed and most exactly observant of 
his contemporaries . 

Most of the anecdotes in which the Duke of 
■Wellington figured have long been public pro- 
perty. His son once helped me to separate the 
wheat from the chaff with the following results. 
Two at least of the most characteristic were 
rather against the Strathfieldsaye host of my 
own day. He, when in the Rifles, had 
been quartered at Walmer when his father, as 
Warden of the Cinque Ports, was in residence. 
Why, he wanted to know, had he not been 
included in a dinner invitation to his regiment? 
The answer promptly came: " F^-M. the Duke 
of Wellington begs to inform' the Marquis of 
Douro that he is the only officer who has not 
left his card at Walmer Castle." With his 
second son he dealt in the same spirit on a dun- 
ning letter from tradesmen who had a long- 
standing bill against the young man. " F.~M. 
the Duke of Wellington begs to inform Messrs. 
Brown, Jones, & Robinson that he is not Lord 

Charles Wellesley." The second Duke also once 

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Mitre and Baton 

pointed out to me in the little Strathfieldsaye 
park the exact spot on which his father dropped 
his stick, and, to the little boy who picked it 
up, used what had become with him a stereo- 
typed phrase, " Can't you please to mind your 
own business ? " During the Duke's Premiership 
a notoriously stupid Earl wanted the Garter. 
" Wliy not," suggested the King, " give him the 
Thistle?" then, as it chanced, vacant. "I am 
afraid, your Majesty, he would think we expected 
him to eat it." 

In 1842 died at Kingston House, Bromp- 
ton, the most celebarated of his brothers, Lord 
Wellesley. A delay of an hour took place at 
the funeral. " It is very inconvenient," said the 
Duke ; " we might have been doing something 
else." Another brother had departed a little 
earlier. A lady sent an anxious inquiry after 
his Grace's health. "There must be some mis- 
take," was the acknowledgment of the friendly 
solicitude ; " tell her it is Lord Cowley who is 
dead. I am very well." He had no liking for 
Lord Ellenborough . The ex-Governor -General 
came back to England with some remarkable 
stories of sunstroke ; about these^ told at Sir 
Robert Peel's dinner-table^ the Duke made no 
remark^ though Sir Robert's face wore an ex- 
pression of incredulity. Appealed to by EUen- 

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borough, the Duke muttered, " All I can say is 
that in some parts of India it is sometimes very 
hot." False humility, he let it be seen, was 
not one of his failings. A propos of some 
startling event which had just happened, he 
said to his old, really esteemed friend. Lady 
Wilton, " That is the case, ma'am, according to 
my understanding, and " (slapping his knee) 
"no one ever had a better." 

" I should like to see the fellow unroll it." 
So said the host to an Apsley House dinner 
guest, the Russian diplomatist. Count Orloff. 
This intimate friend of the Emperor Nicholas 
had just exhibited the strength of his hand by 
crushing up as if it were paper an unusually 
heavy silver plate. The strong man accepted 
his host's challenge, did as he was dared to 
do, but in doing it almost tore his fingers to 
pieces . 

How the great Duke could deal with what 
he considered epistolary impertinence has been 
shown above. His son inherited the same 
faculty. On his father's death he received a 
letter from some lady, offering to sell for a high 
price some family papers of the Wellesley family 
of which she had contrived to get hold. He 
endorsed this attempt at blackmail with the 

words, " I am telling her you may like to buy 

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Mitre and Baton 

them," and sent the letter to Lord Houghton as 
a collector of curiosities. The second Duke's 
personal likeness to his father was of the same 
kind as that of Sir Thomas Gladstone to his 
brother, the Prime Minister. The features of 
the two showed a general but definite resem- 
blance. The mouth, however, and the jaw of 
the second Duke of Wellington, as in the case 
of the second Gladstone baronet, lacked the 
signs of decision and strength distinguishing 
the same features in the more famous bearers 
of the same name. The last owner of Strath- 
fieldsaye combined some antiquity rather than 
eccentricity of manner with a shrewdness not 
unworthy of his sire, as well as with his father's 
capacity for sharp and sometimes sarcastic say- 
ings. No one understood him' better than Lady 
Dorothy Nevill, together with her son and 
daughter the most frequent and most warmly 
welcomed of his guests, which at one time or 
another included most of those, whatever their 
calling or degree, chiefly in social evidence. 
The Duke's refusal to take his name off the 
Carlton for his party independence — " I shall do 
no such folly, for the pwDsition of the place suits 
me " — and his way of speeding the departures 
as well as welcoming the arrivals among his 
visitors were cases in point. Henry Irving, the 

67 



Great Victorians 

actor, had been induced by Lady Dorothy to 
accept an invitation on condition of returning 
to London the next day after an early lunch. 
For this meal Irving suggested 1.30 p.m. as 
a suitable hour, so that he might catch the train 
leaving Mortimer Station some time after two. 
" The day," said the Duke, " is hot, the roads 
are not too good, the horses are not yours ; 
luncheon will be ready at one." Billy Russell, 
the famous war correspondent, always found a 
second home at Strathfieldsaye . Here he once 
complained to the Duke of some family vexa- 
tions. " My dear Billy," was the expostulating 
comment, " I am sorry to see you are not yet 
a man of the world. Look at me ! I am old, 
I am deaf, I am blind, I owe thousands to my 
bankers, all my farms are unlet, the only man 
in whom I am interested has just married the 
least desirable of all living womten, and yet I 
am happy." During t|he early eighties he re- 
ceived civic honour, bestowed on his father in 
1 8 14. Before being gazetted to the Middlesex 
Lord Lieutenancy he appeared one morning at 
the breakfast -table with a particularly knowing 
smile on his astute old face, and with two pieces 
of notepaper in his hand— one a request from 
a local Sawbones, with no shadow of claim upon 
him, for recommendation to, as he had heard, 

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Mitre and Baton 

a vacant coronership, the other the reply he had 
composed while dressing. It ran as follows : 

"Dear , Your clock goes a little too fast. 

Coroner Watkins is in perfect health, and I am 
not Lord Lieutenant." This led the talk to 
members of Watkins's profession generally. 
" Whatever sins," said the Duke, " I may have 
committed, I have never recommended any one 
a doctor or a wife." 

About the time now looked back upon the 
Duke had among his guests an elderly young 
gentleman of the Press with a passion for 
talking about himself, his historic friends and 
acquaintances during the Franco -Prussian War. 
" This little thing," he said, showing a ring or 
taking out a cigar-case, *' was given me by 
Bismarck." "Then," said the host, "he is a 
greater rogue than I thought, for you told us 
yesterday that it came from Gambetta, and 
Bismarck, of course, must have stolen it from 
him." Another little reminiscence in a similar 
vein not only illustrates the Duke's formidable 
sharpness, but suggests that he had read a good 
deal more than he was generally supposed to 
have done . Another of his guests had recounted 
how, while yachting off the west coast of 
Ireland, he had heard the officiating clergyman 
pray for the sea-girt inhabitants of Achill and 

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Great Victorians 

Clare. The only notice taken by the master of 
the house was, " You heard nothing of the sort, 
and are stealing from Lockhart, as I will show." 
He left the room for a moment, returned with 
Sir Walter Scott's Life by his son-in-law, opened 
the seventh volume at page 69, and read the 
prayer of the minister of the Cumbrays, two 
miserable islands in the mouth of the Clyde : 
" O Lord, bless and be gracious to the greater 
and the lesser Cumbrays, and in Thy mercy do 
not forget the adjacent islands of Great Britain 
and Ireland." On another occasion some one 
had boasted his descent from an eighteenth- 
century Earl whose family name happened to 
be his own, the title being long extinct. "As 
for your story," commented the Duke, " there 

is this much to be said. Lord at last sank 

into absolute idiocy, but as he died without issue 
your pedigree does not quite fit the facts." 

The great country friend alike of the first 
and the second Dukes of Wellington was their 
neighbour, the Winchfield clergyman already 
mentioned as honoured by the original wearer 
of the peerage with the account of his visit to 
Exeter Cathedral. His novel, "The Subaltern," 
had appeared in 1825, and gave what the great 
man called the best account of the famous battle 
ever written, for the Chaplain -General had beei> 

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Mitre and Baton 

in it as a combatant officer before taking Orders. 
Mr, Gleig outlived the second Duke by four 
years, soldierly rather than clerical, except for 
the white choker, in his appearance to the last, 
and kindly giving the present writer many 
opportunities of direct communication with him. 
From Mr. Gleig, and not from his own father, 
the second Duke had the account of the great 
sailor and the great soldier seeing each other 
for the first time, not, as was often said, at 
White's Club or on any social occasion, but at 
the Prime Minister's in Downing Street. Here 
they had happened to call on the same morning. 
After leaving the premises Nelson said to a 
friend, " I have just passed on the stairs a 
young man about whom, if I mistake not, a 
good deal will soon be heard." " His Grace 
and the Admiral," continued the second Duke, 
"had this in common. They were both the 
greatest masters of their crafts that ever lived. 
He who won Waterloo and he who died 
gloriously at Trafalgar knew practically every 
detail in every department of their work. 
Neither Napoleon nor any of his admirals or 
colonels had the same acquaintance with every 
part of machinery to be set in motion on land 
or water." That estimate endorsed an opinion 
expressed about himself, his victories, and their 

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Great Victorians 

causes, by the great Duke himself many years 
earher. " Mass6na," he had answered to a 
question about the leaders he had overcome, 
"was by far the greatest general against me. 
When he was there I could neither eat, drink, 
nor sleep. I never knew a moment's respite 
from anxiety." For the littleness known as 
" crabbing " the hero always had the greatest 
contempt. " Are not," asked of him George IV, 
"the British cavalry the finest in the world?" 
The answer was, " The French are very good, 
sir." "But ours," repeated the monarch, "are 
better." Again came the same response, " The 
French are very good, sir." " This modesty of 
greatness," said Mr. Gleig, " peeped out quietly 
in many unrecorded little ways. For instance, 
he once met at my house a young lady iwho 
did not know him by sight, and to whom he 
talked in the paternal way that so well became 
him. She talked about going to see a model 
of the Waterloo battle, then on view at Win- 
chester. ' By all means,' said the Duke, ' do 
so. It is a very exact representation, both of 
the place and fighting, to my certain knowledge, 
for I was there myself.' " The old clergyman, 
the junior by more than a quarter of a century 
of his famous friend, correctly called him the 
" soldier of all work," quick to detect any error 

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Mitre and Baton 

in performance, from the shape of a camp- 
kettle to the plan of a pitched battle. 

All the present writer's Wellington associa- 
tions are connected with Somerset, and really 
gather themselves around the pillar on the 
Blackdown Hills. In this part he was idolized 
as a local worthy, whose homely wit h^d speci- 
mens preserved of it beneath the humblest roof, 
sparing, as he did, himself much less than he 
spared others. Of his own portraits he made 
excellent fun. "They have painted me," he 
said, " in every possible attitude except stand- 
ing on my head." The only picture he ever 
commissioned was a large one of Waterloo by 
Allan. On calling, as desired, for payment )at 
Apsley House, the artist found the Duke count- 
ing out the money in notes. "Perhaps," Ihe 
said, " it would save time to give a cheque." 
"Do you suppose," came the retort, " I would 
let them know at Coutts' what a fool I have 
been? " Throughout the west the Duke's muni- 
ficence was known to equal his modesty. In 
one year between the Tone and the Tamar his 
charities amounted to four thousand pounds. I 
had heard it said that the first Duke often drove 
down to the House of Lords in a hansom. In 
point of time he might have done so, because 
the development of the private cabriolet into 

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Great Victorians 

the hansom cab completed itself in 1823, 
though further improved upon ten years after- 
wards. The second Duke, however, main- 
tained that his father and a hired hansom were 
strangers to each other, adding, " In those days 
hansoms were almost exclusively patronized by 
Albert Smith's ' gents,' who drove in them with 
the short clay pipes in their mouths then more 
fashionable than cigars . For the most part of his 
Grace either walked to Westminster across the 
Park, or very much less frequently drove there 
in an open conveyance invented by himself, some- 
thing of the hansom type. I am the more clear 
on this point because my only drive with him 
in this vehicle, in, I think, the year of his death, 
was followed by the only speech I ever heard 
him make in Parliament. Some speaker had 
charged him' with not understanding the measure 
then debated. ' Well, my lords, all I can say 
is that I read the Bill once, I read it twice, I 
read it three times, and if after that I don't 
understand the Bill, why, then, my lords, all I 

have to say is that I must be a d d stupid 

fellow.'" "Did the Duke," I once asked, 
" trouble to prepare any remarks he had to 
make?" " He never," was the answer, "spoke 
about anything that he did not know about in 
all its aspects." He had an instinctive passion 

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Mitre and Baton 

for details ; he would have made a first-rate 
sub -editor, for he read all the newspapers. He 
never missed anything in them : if fresh inven- 
tions, such as small patents, etc., were adver- 
tised, he at once sent out his servant to get 
them, examined them minutely, often introduced 
them into his speeches, and let the patentee 
know if they did not answer his description 
of them. No public word uttered by the Duke 
ever miscarried, because of his authority, not his 
oratorical skill . On his feet at Westminster he 
cast off all resemblance to himself in private 
or on the battlefield. Carried away by the im- 
petus of a vehement and emphatic delivery, he 
delivered his opinions on an enlarged scale, and 
revelled in superlatives. A vote of thanks to 
an Indian General was recommended after a 
campaign, " the most brilliant ever seen." A 
not very serious disturbance exceeded every- 
thing within the range of his experience. " His 
Grace's foreign politics as the first man of his 
age in that line? " said the second Duke, repeat- 
ing to himself my question. " My father, as you 
know, created our present embassy in Paris, and, 
in conjunction with Talleyrand, arranged every- 
thing for the restoration of Louis XVHI, after 
his return from Ghent, where he had been in 
ej^ile. He was a real non -interventionist, an<J 

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Great Victorians 

as such his whole system lies in a nutshell. ' It 
is no concern of ours what form of government , 
other nations think fit to set up. If they prefer 
despotism, let them keep it. If they replace 
despotism with free institutions, let us not inter- 
fere. Our sole duty is that they observe exist- 
ing treaties, and give the King's subjects, when 
mixing with them, protection of life and pro- 
perty.' As for the various diplomatists with 
whom he had to do, his Grace placed Talley- 
rand as easily first as among generals he placed 
Mass6na. 'Talleyrand,' my father repeatedly 
told me, ' never talked for effect in society or 
flashed out witticisms. But if you carefully 
listened you were sure to hear at intervals some- 
thing so good that you would remember it all 
your life.' " After his victories it was not his 
universally acknowledged authority and wisdom 
which impressed foreigners so profoundly, but 
his detestation of fuss and pomp. Eor instance, 
in 1 8 1 4, after the retreat of Soult's army, the 
Mayor and municipality of Toulouse prepared 
him a grand reception at the Hotel de Ville, 
waiting till he should approach the chief gate 
of the town. With a single aide-de-camp he 
rode round to another entrance, took his place 
on the balcony, bowed, and then disappeared. 
" No general," Mr. Gleig once told me, " ever 

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Mitre and Baton 

succeeded to such an extent in inspiring his 
troops with the integrity and honour which 
animated his whole life." His soldiers conse- 
quently won the goodwill of the people through 
whose land they marched. The natives there- 
fore permitted the Duke's hounds to follow in 
the rear of his army, so that he had more than 
one day's hunting in the interval of battles. 
Neither Napoleon nor the Duke ever allowed 
any one to shave him. The Duke took his 
razors to a small shop in Piccadilly, and waited 
while they were being set or ground ; his 
supreme antagonist carried throughout his cam- 
paigns a strop and hone made or bought in 
Ajaccio. The great statue of Napoleon by an 
Italian sculptor was the decoration of Apsley 
House. Here it happened more than once that, 
unexpectedly appearing when all the world was 
out of town, the Duke found only caretakers. 
" It does not," he said, " signify in the least. 
I can afford to do without servants. I 
always brush my own clothes, and if I were 
strong enough I would black my own boots." 
One domestic ofhce the Duke never performed 
—a family " job." During the Peel Govern- 
ment an important place fell vacant in Ireland. 
One of his Irish relatives, anxious to get it, 
wrote : " One word from your Grace would be 

71 



Great Victorians 

sufficient." By return of post came the answer : 
" Dear , Not one word, from yours affec- 
tionately, Wellington." 

The second Marchioness, grandmother to the 
present Marquis, of Salisbury had perhaps a 
deeper and truer insight into the Duke's real 
character than any other woman of her time. 
" You always," she once said to him, " take 
things so coolly, that I suppose you never lie 
awake with anxiety?" "No," he said; "I 
make it a point never to be anxious, and I 
never lie awake at all." With women his 
manner varied. When in India he had given 
up violin playing as a frivolous amusement and 
waste of time. After this his chief relaxation 
was supplied by human beings. These, if they 
happened to be of the other sex, were treated 
as agreeable companions or as playthings. In 
neither aspect could any one of them safely 
promise a friend to say a word for him to 
the Duke with anything like a certainty of suc- 
cess. " No woman," he once said to one of 
his West of England hostesses, " ever loved 
me." And this remarkably clever lady summed 
up for my benefit his whole personal ex- 
periences. " His father died when he was 
twelve years old. His mother was unsym- 
pathetic ; he never felt himself one of his 

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Mitre and Baton 

own family. His whole life was as loveless as 
his school life was broken and his education 
imperfect . 

" Number i, London," was the Duke's de- 
scription of his home at Hyde Park Corner 
when, with boyish satisfaction and glee, he 
surveyed the finishing strokes to the structure, 
put by himself. The situation was then abso- 
lutely unique at the West End. On two sides 
were Park ; in front, scarcely an obstacle then 
existed to bar the view to Kensington. The 
particular spot also had military traditions ; 
these, with characteristic thoroughness of in- 
quiry, he had found out before any one else 
suspected their existence. George II had given 
the piece of ground at the north end of Hyde 
Park to an old soldier who fought with him 
at Dettingen, named Allen. There, for his and 
her support, his wife kept a stall . In 1 7 7 1 
Lord Chancellor Apsley, who eventually became 
Lord Bathurst appropriated the site for him- 
self, and set the builders to work. Mrs. Allen, 
the applewoman, entered a claim of compen- 
sation for disturbance, brought an action (called 
at the time " la suit between two old women ")j 
and the defendant was cast in heavy damages. 
Mrs. Allen, with the little fortune thus acquired, 
found a more congenial home farther west at 

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Great Victorians 

Kew ; and George III increased the area avail- 
able for the Chancellor's operations by giving 
him, in 1784, all the space occupied by the 
Park Lodge. The original mansion of red 
brick had been designed by the Chancellor 
himself, who had completed the first floor before 
providing any means of communication with the 
second. The staircase, indeed, seems not to 
have been fully equipped till the years during 
which the whole place becamfe the property of 
the Duke's brother, while in 1808 Foreign 
Secretary, and living there in high state till the 
January of 1 8 1 5 ; five years afterwards it was 
bought by the Duke, who combined with this 
possession the official Downing Street abode 
when Prime Minister in 1828. The new owner 
could therefore place it in the hands of Wyatt, 
the builder, to remove its great inconveniences. 
The Duke_, however, made daily visits from 
Westminster to see the progress made, to con- 
fer with the clerk of the works, and to instruct 
the masons in certain details of their craft. 
When the Waterloo anniversary of 1830 came 
round, the casing of the red brick with Bath 
stone was finished ; the west wing and portico 
of the same material were added. The national 
demi-god, his fighting days over, had installed 
himself beneath a roof exactly to his own taste, 

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Mitre and Baton 

and with many surroundings practically of his 
own creation. No alteration was made till, 
during the Reform Bill Riots, 183 1-2, there 
were added the Bramah bullet-proof iron blinds, 
taken down by the second Duke in 1856. 
A propos of St. James's Square, the Faubourg 
Saint -Germain, as he called it, of London, 
Disraeli in " Lothair " expatiates on the free 
and patrician life of its inhabitants. Of that 
life during the first quarter of the nineteenth 
century Apsley House became the centre, while 
his sobriquet, the " beau," showed that the Duke 
ranked as the personification. 

Whatever may have been his view"s about the 
Divine Right of Kings, the Duke held the pro- 
videntially pre-ordained supremacy of the upper 
classes to be in the interests of the whole com- 
munity, and regarded the universal deference 
commanded by himself not so much as the 
tribute due to a great soldier, but the mark 
of respect which belonged of right to the most 
familiar figure of an aristocratic class that should 
know only one motto. Noblesse oblige. He 
was not only, to repeat a word already applied 
more than once, the sage of Europe, after his 
soldiering days had closed, but the chief around 
whom there naturally rallied all the forces of 
aristocratic privilege and pride. Such a man 

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Great Victorians 

could not wear his heart upon his sleeve. If 
he had not concealed his true self by a stony 
mask the " Iron Duke " might have been seen 
as the slave of sentiment. The few who had 
access to him in Brussels saw no approach to 
triumph or joy, nothing but blunt gravity in 
his tone, when he spoke about the battle. " It 

has been a very serious business, a d d 

near thing, the nearest you ever saw in your 
life. Bliicher and I have lost thirty thousand 
men, and I don't think it would have been done 
if I had not been there." All that was for the 
world's consumption. Those who surprised 
him in his room often found him with eyes 
which dropped tears on the paper. For art and 
letters he had no turn, but the eyes and mouth 
proclaimed the whole being to be traversed by 
a vein of strong and deep sentiment. When 
those he loved were about him he could not 
but let himself go. After speaking about the 
battle in the way just described he was with 
his niece, Lady Fitzroy Somerset, and when 
trying to say something on the subject burst 
into a flood of tears. His most intimate friend, 
Mrs. Arbuthnot, died; he washed his eyes and 
showed not a sign of emotion when he appeared 
in the House of Lords. The Rev. G. R. Gleig 
has described what passed when he first heard 

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Mitre and Baton 

of Arbuthnot bimself being seriously ill. 
Clasping the doctor's hand, he articulated as 
well as he could, " No, no, he is not very- 
bad ; he'll get better; he'll not die." At 
the funeral afterwards the power of self-control 
entirely failed him. Only a strong effort of 
the iron will enabled him to stay the service out. 

In houses that he frequently visited, or had 
but lately left, conversation dwelt on the minutest 
details of his person and manner. The impres- 
sion left by this talk when least imtrustworthy 
was that the secret of his charm, especially for 
women, lay in his smile ; never, I believe, 
shown more happily than when some lady 
asked him, "Is it true you were surprised at 
Waterloo ? " only to call forth the answer, " No, 
but I am now." 

A venerable friend of the present writer was 
well acquainted with a once very attractive lady 
who had won the favour both of Wellington 
and his famous adversary. Which of the two 
did she prefer? She shook ber head, and with 
a puzzled air said, " Napoleon was the lover, 
but Wellington was the gentleman." Had the 
phrase " the first gentleman of Europe " been 
applied to him, it would have fitted him to the 
life ; for, with all his little failings, he showed 
a consideration for others' feelings at once the 

83 



Great Victorians 

mark of good breeding and practical Christi- 
anity. During his engagement to Lady 
Catherine Pakenham he was on foreign ser- 
vice ; he had not seen his fiancee for years. 
Her family disapproved of the match. Since 
Wellington, then Sir Arthur Wellesley, saw her 
last, she had been disfigured by the smallpox. 
The lady wrote a letter of release. He refused 
the proffered freedom, and married her in 1806, 
the year of his going into the House of Com- 
mons as Member for Rye. Of course before 
that, as well as after, Rumour, as with the great 
it always happens, occupied herself with her 
bonnes fortunes and escapades. In 18 16 his 
name had been mixed up with that of Lady 
Frances Webster ; she brought an action against 
the libeller, and got two thousand pounds 
damages. About the same time there were 
stories of philandering with Lady Caroline 
Lamb, his flatterer certainly (and he could take 
adulation in large doses), but probably not his 
sweetheart . 

Some years later than this a lady of the 
easiest virtue, Harriet Wilson, had a good 
deal to say about him in a book, reprinted, I 
believe, within the last few years. The Duke 
took no notice, but congratulated himself that 
her memory was not so good as his. All this 

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Mitre and Baton 

sort of thing soon became public property ; 
naturally the most of it was made in Whig 
circles. Hence, when he excused himself for 
leaving a Woburn Abbey party prematurely on 
the plea of Cabinet business in London, the 
Duchess of Bedford acknowledged the letter in 
six words : " DEAR DuKE,— For Cabinet read 
boudoir." Facts or fictions of this kind were 
limited to the smart circles of the period exclu- 
sively in London. They never penetrated or 
even, I think, reached the outside world. 

When taken in my childhood to visit the 
Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, I have a dim 
recollection of a shortish figure, perfectly erect, 
seated on a little white cob, gently cantering 
down Piccadilly towards the enclosure where the 
world's show was held, sometimes amid the awed 
silence as of a crowd that beheld a more than 
human vision, but now and then to the music of 
cheers, whose outburst it did not seem in human 
nature to suppress or forbid. 

For much concerning the Duke and the habit 
in which he lived one has had to draw upon 
those of one's elders to whom' his daily aspects 
had long been familiar. A first-hand testimony 
to the far-reaching social influence unconsciously 
exercised by him may now be given. It has 
been seen already how Bishop Phillpjotts on 

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Great Victorians 

leaving Exeter Cathedral with his ecclesiastical 
counterpart mechanically, after the fashion of 
Major Pendennis, strained himself to his utmost 
height, and assumed something of the erect 
military gait. What was done without thinking 
of it by Henry of Exeter might be seen during 
those years and long afterwards in the case of 
innumerable laymen and divines. It was in the 
latter of these, and especially among those who 
doubled the parts of vicar and squire, that I 
chiefly used to see it. The parish clergyman 
now referred to possessed, perhaps, a Welling- 
ton nose. He proceeded to enlarge the per- 
sonal resemblance by taking on, more than 
half unintentionally, the Wellington manner. 
The Duke used informally to inspect those 
who made up his little establishment at Walmer 
Castle ramparts. The "squarson" now in my 
mind's eye, under the shadow of the Blackdown 
Hills, surveyed his household after morning 
prayers in the little grass -grown yard of his 
manor-house, fronted by a bowling-green 
trodden by guests who had sometimes included 
Lord Lyndhurst, Sir Robert Peel, and the 
Waterloo hero himself. The whole method of 
inspection, the issue of orders for the day or 
week, and the reception of reports from head 
gardeners, under -bailiffs, and the foremen of 

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Mitre and Baton 

hedgers and ditchers^ proceeded on lines o£ 
precision not less redolent of the barrack yard or 
drill -ground than the life, movement, and sounds 
now predominant over all. Many years after- 
wards, having only recalled it by chance, I 
mentioned this to the Rev. G. R. Gleig. 
" Yours," he said, " was by no means a unique 
experience. His Grace, you see, loomed so large 
in the national eye and mind that every class 
of the community found itself unconsciously 
reproducing some Wellingtonian characteristic." 
These personal impressions, even when not 
for the first time placed on paper, will at least 
be generally fresh enough to merit some record. 
They have no pretension to embody anything 
like a biography, and may therefore be sup- 
plemented by one of the Duke's little known 
achievements in time of peace, forming the 
appropriate sequel and completion of the results 
won for his country in war. The founder of the 
British Embassy in Paris was an ancestor of its 
present occupant. Sir Francis, now Lord, Bertie. 
That predecessor, Lord Norreys, dispatched to 
France in 1566, stands out from' other diplo- 
matists of his own, or a little earlier, age as 
among the first permanently accredited to a 
foreign Court (1566). Before then envoys 
extraordinary were sent as necessity might arise 

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Great Victorians 

on missions ad hoc— the negotiation of a royal 
marriage, the conclusion of a peace, the con- 
spiracy between two contracting Powers for 
seizing some possession of an objectionable or 
helpless neighbour and adding it to their own. 
The trick having been done, the agent returned 
home, found a grand reception with a grant of 
land and generally a title awaiting him from 
his Sovereign ; and, it may be added, when 
travelling for pleasure beyond the seas, was 
discreetly careful not to show himself again on 
the scene of his international triumphs. Queen 
Elizabeth's representative at the Court of 
Charles IX is thought to have lived at no 
very great distance from the spot occupied by 
his official descendant to-day. His special 
business was to arrange an Anglo-French con- 
vention which would improve the position of 
French Protestants. Of course he failed, and 
was superseded by Sir Francis Walsingham'. 
The importance of the negotiations, and the 
distinction of the political company attracted by 
them to the Seine, gave sixteenth-century Paris 
the same place among diplomatic capitals as 
that filled a hundred and fifty years afterwards 
by The Hague. As the prize of the profession 
the Paris Embassy went in the first half of the 
Victorian era to the Duke's brother. Lord Cowley. 

88 



Mitre and Baton 

The Napoleonic wars were broken by the short 
peace (April 1 8 1 4 to March 1 8 1 5 ), the term of 
Napoleon's detention at Elba. Then it was that 
the Duke's ambassadorial experiences began. 
He had, however, at this time no special house 
for their performance, but did his diplomatic 
and political business in an hotel at the corner 
of the Place de la Concorde and the Rue 
Boissy d'Anglas. The European peace per- 
manently re-established itself in 181 5. The 
Duke now determined that those entrusted, like 
himself, with his Sovereign's business with his 
nearest continental neighbour should be suit- 
ably lodged. He therefore bought 39 Faubourg 
Saint-Honore, our present Embassy, from the 
Princess Pauline Borghese for £25,000. To- 
day it is worth ten times that amount, which 
shows the purchaser to have been scarcely less 
of an expert in the art of commercial bargain- 
ing than in that of war. Never— was the ver- 
dict, not only of the British Empire but of the 
European Corps diplomatique — did the Ambas- 
sador take possession of his new abode during 
months more memorable than those which wit- 
nessed the instability and insecurity of a 
dominion obtained by violence and fraud. 
Only a year before the malign influence of 
France had dominated Europe ; like a pesti- 

89 



Great Victorians 

lence it had enfeebled and tormented all the 
nations . In 1 8 1 5 it was only remembered 
like a sick man's dream. Sic se/npier tyrannis 
was perhaps the only Latin quotation ever made 
by the Duke ; with that he clinched his pre- 
diction that, future attempts to imitate the 
Napoleonic example would end in a like col- 
lapse. In the intervals of re-establishing the 
French Monarchy, the Duke made a little journey 
in Belgium and France. In the country inn 
where he spent the night an English lady was 
taken seriously and suddenly ill. At first there 
seemed no chance of procuring medical help. 
Presently, however, a young Scotch doctor 
named Stewart appeared among the latest 
British arrivals. He at once attended to the 
invalid, in whom the Duke had recognized the 
wife of one of his officers. His professional 
services proved so successful that the lady's life 
was saved ; her convalescence was assured, as 
was also the young physician's future. For the 
Duke, as Commander-in-Chief, at once nomi- 
nated him to one of the best positions on the 
medical staff of the Army. 



90 



CHAPTER II 

FROM WELLINGTON TO WOLSELEY 

A Lemon Street statue for Lord Raglan as a Truro ex-M.P. — 
Fitzroy Somerset acts " Ulysses " on the Latin play stage at 
Westminster School — Grinds at Spanish with the future 
Duke of Wellington on the voyage out to the Peninsula — 
By marriage with Lady Harriet Wellesley becomes the 
Duke's nephew-in-law — During the peace interval of 1814 
Secretary of the Duke's Paris Embassy — House of 
Commons days — Military promotion, and created Lord 
Raglan in 1852 — With the Badminton foxhounds and in 
the Savernake game coverts — As aide-de-camp at Waterloo 
loses his arm, but will not lose the ring which is a 
present from his wife — After the Crimea — Cardigan and 
his colonels on the King's Road, Brighton — Aristocrat 
and hussar — The old patrician regime personified — 
Much virtue in the lash — The soldiers starving and the 
General in a floating palace — Alvanley and Cardigan 
in the shires — Assheton Smith and Cardigan ride against 
each other with the hounds till their horses nearly drop — 
The troops and the dying Colonel : " All safe for heaven ! " 
— Gradual appearance of new and better military types — 
Sir William KnoUys, the founder of the Aldershot camp — 
Indian soldiers as English teachers — Lord Lawrence of the 
Punjab — Chairman of the London School Board — John 
and Henry's respective epitaphs — Comparison between the 
two brothers — Lord Hardinge and the Lawrences — Governor- 
General of India — The Sikh wars — Lough Cutra Cattle — 
St. Helen's, Dublin— " Paddy Gough "— Chillianwallah— 

91 



Great Victorians 

Hardinge's gallantry in the Peninsula — "What, tents, and 
chairs inside them ! " — Mrs. Disraeli's luck in her nocturnal 
neighbours — At daggers drawn with the Duke of Newcastle 
and the Cabinet during the Crimean War — Dies at Tunbridge 
Wells in 1856 — Outram, the " Bayard of India" — Sir Colin 
Campbell, afterwards Lord Clyde, of Crimean and Indian 
fame — His delight with the House of Lords — With all he 
sees in town and country — Romps with children in the 
hayfield — Sir Donald Stewart as he looked and walked 
in Kensington Gardens — A typical Highlander, with Norse 
strain in blood and features — Return to India — Commander- 
in-Chief in India — A Councillor at the India Office — His 
character summed up by Lord Bryce — A keen sportsman — 
Picturesque figure and surroundings at Chelsea Hospital — 
His opinion of the British soldier — Sir Louis Mallet — His 
Board of Trade work — Appointed to the under-secretaryship 
in 1874 — Grandson of Mallet Du Pan, the French publicist 
and Revolution refugee — Comes to represent Cobdenism at 
the India Office — Free Trader, economist, and cosmopolitan 
conversationist — How he saw a great Duke fall down the stairs 
at a Paris cafe and helped to pick him up dead — Sir Henry 
Norman — Norman as soldier and pupil in the Lawrence 
school — The might-have-been Viceroy of 1892 — His last 
promotion to the Chelsea Hospital governorship — Anglo- 
Indian preparation for the improved officer of the nine- 
teenth- and twentieth-century type — Roberts and Salisbury 
afloat — A glass of cold water : " Thy necessity is greater 
than mine " — Some points in common between Roberts and 
Wolseley — Sir George Hamley, the Wolseley type ; the new 
army and the results — Henry Brackenbury as a type and 
worker — Sir Evelyn Wood and Sir Coleridge Grove the only 
two survivors of the Wolseley school — Sword, pen, and 
Sir Evelyn Wood — War correspondent types from Xenophon 
to John and Henry Hozier — The three brothers, Sir William, 
Charles, and Keith Eraser — Brackenbury's diary of the 
Franco-Prussian War — Solving the mystery of Bazaine's 
movements — Hamber and Brackenbury's proof — The "hit " 
92 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

of to-morrow — The fifteenth-century Sir Robert Brackenbury 
— Sir John Pender's steam yacht Eledra — Mowbray's " Est 
in conspectu Tenedos" — The value of Wolseley's associ- 
ation with Brackenbury — The latter's articles en military re- 
form — Office of Commander-in-Chief abolished — Bismarck's 
desire to interview Wolseley — Sir Charles Dilke given 
Bismarck's opinion of Lord Wolseley by the German states- 
man himself — At Cranbrook, Mr. Pandeli RaUi's Surrey 
country house — " 'Spects I growed " — The officer who had 
nothing to wear — Albert Smith's gent — Cremorne Gardens 
— Altercations with the cabmen — Sir Vincent Caillard the 
one survivor of the officers trained by Wolseley's ablest deputy 
— The Duke of Connaught's request — Queen Victoria's 
pleasure — Allan Thorndike Rice and Von Moltke — The 
Prussian soldier a subject of conversation — Lady Wolseley 
and Madame Gallifet the best dressed women in Europe — 
Wolseley's short ten minutes' sleep before the battle of 
Tel-el- Kebir — Lord Spencer and the sleepy Prime Minister 
— Wellington flirts with Madame Quintana just before the 
battle of Orthes, where the Duke was slightly injured — The 
Duke has a short repose before the battle of St. Sebastian — 
Lord Kitchener's preference for gold and silver tea-services 
to " swords of honour." 



In Lemon Street, Truro, there stands a monu- 
ment to the explorer Lander. When I first saw 
it a generation ag"o, a proposal, periodically 
made, was being pressed, more earnestly than 
usual, to supplement it with some memorial of 
Wellington's best known officer and pupil, chief 
of the staff in war, during the peace inter- 
val of 1 8 14-15, on the Duke's secretarial staff 
at the Paris Embassy, and eventually, after 

93 



Great Victorians 

Napoleon's fall, military secretary to his old 
chief at the Horse Guards. Lord Fitzroy 
Somerset's connection with Cornwall consisted 
in his father, Henry, the fifth Duke of Beau- 
fort, having married Elizabeth, Admiral Bos- 
cawen's daughter. The picturesque home of 
the Boscawen family was Tregothnan, on the 
river Fal, two or three miles from Truro town. 
When, therefore, he had laid down his arms, 
and wished to serve his country in peace, the 
borough of Truro provided him with a seat at 
St. Stephen's from 1818 to 1820, and again 
from 1826 to 1829. Birth and association, 
therefore, gave him a place in the politico - 
military order much like that belonging to the 
great Duke himself. In his own person and 
character he showed from the first the blend of 
the courtly grace and keen sportmanship common 
to the Somersets with the chivalrous courage, 
the tenacity, and doggedness characteristic of 
the " sea-dogs " in general and of the Boscawens 
in particular. Breeding, therefore, environment, 
temper, and bearing made Lord Raglan as 
much a representative as the Duke himself of 
the aristocratic school that was to dominate the 
army from Waterloo to Sebastopol. 

Fitzroy Somerset resembled Arthur Wellesley 
in familiarity with Thames -side but not Eton 

94 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

playing fields. His education had been picked 
up at Westminster, beginning when that school 
had not ceased to be the nursery of great public 
servants. Among the earliest of these had been 
the Elizabethan voyager Hakluyt, and in the 
next century Sir Henry Vane and other political 
leaders of the Cromwellian era. So late as 1846 
the Russell Cabinet consisted largely of Old 
Westminsters. Among Raglan's Westminster 
contemporaries, eventually like himself field- 
marshals, were Lords Anglesey, Byng, Strafford, 
and Combermere. Plautus and Terence have 
not always supplied the sole repertory of the 
Westminster Latin play. In Fitzroy Somerset's 
day Latin dramas were written by a certain 
Gager for the Westminster scholars ; one of 
these, " Ulysses Redux," held a school stage 
till modern times, and was acted in by Fitzroy 
Somerset, who told Kinglake he had come 
across some lines in it containing in germ a 
doctrine afterwards developed by the playwright 
with much learning in a treatise advocating the 
right of husbands to beat their wives. Fitzroy 
Somerset entered the Army in 1804 as a cornet 
in the 4th Light Dragoons. Four years later 
he exchanged into the 6th garrison battalion^ 
and very shortly afterwards transferred himself 
to the 43rd Regiment. He had no acquaint- 

95 



Great Victorians 

ance with Sir Arthur Wellesley till the time of 
starting for the Peninsula. His introduction to 
him then grew into a friendship before their 
destination was reached. On their way out the 
two men worked together at the Spanish lan- 
guage. Throughout the entire war he remained 
at Wellington's side, first as aide-de-camp, then 
as military secretary. The Bourbons were re- 
stored for the first time in 1814. Louis XVIII 
abdicated and fled in the spring of the next year. 
The peace re-established the British Embassy 
in Paris, with Lord Fitzroy Somerset for Secre- 
tary of Embassy. The quiet interval gave the 
soldier -diplomatist the opportunity of finding a 
wife in Emily Harriet Wellesley, the third 
Earl of Mornington's daughter. He thus 
became nephew by marriage of the great man 
himself. 

Fitzroy Somerset's conversion into Lord 
Raglan two years before his appointment to 
the Crimean command might have been taken 
as indicating his place in official opinion. Out 
of London, in the Badminton country, no run 
with the hounds finished that did not see him 
in at the death. In London clubs and 
drawing-rooms, to afternoon strollers from 
Whitehall by way of St. James's Street and Pall 

Mall to Piccadilly, his tall, byroad-shouldered, 

96 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

well-preserved figure had long been only less 
familiar than that of Wellington himself. For 
he had been Military Secretary to the Com- 
mander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards till the 
Duke's death in 1852. Then came a popular 
feeling that;, as the last representative of the 
great Wellington tradition^ in the event of war 
with Russia the country should have the benefit 
of his associations and services. All his work 
in every department was admitted by the 
severest judges to have been the very best 
possible of its kind. But outside Whitehall he 
had no great experience^ and even there less 
opportunity than he might have had of develop- 
ing a power of initiative,, because Wellington's 
extraordinary grasp and prodigious industry 
made him absolutely independent and self- 
sufhcing. So said Kinglake to his Bridgwater 
constituents when the war broke out ; he placed 
the same opinion on permanent record in his 
" Invasion of the Crimea." ^ Some misgivings 
at this choice arose from a doubt whether 
Raglan's thirty years' apprenticeship to various 
military departments in peace time would be 
found the best preparation for the very different 
responsibilities of the field, where, as Kinglake 
put it, with picturesque force, the genius of war 
^ Vol. II, p. 168. 

97 G 



Great Victorians 

abhors uniformity and tramples upon forms and 
regulations. Such considerations^, however, 
weighed only with the thoughtful and more 
experienced few. The English people at large 
knew nothing about Lord Raglan beyond his 
name. A few^ perhaps, remembered his tall, 
well-knit, and proportionate figure as they had 
seen him in Pall Mall, the bright, placid face 
surmounting the strong, square shoulders, and 
the skill with which the empty sleeve of the 
arm lost at Waterloo was so arranged that its 
emptiness was almost concealed. Others heard 
from those who had seen him with the Badmin- 
ton Hunt or in the game coverts of his native 
district how little this loss interfered with his 
prowess as a sportsman, with what skill he 
took his own line in the chase, and how at the 
end of the run, over the stiffest country, he was 
always in the same field as the fox. First-rate 
judgment, indeed, united itself in the English 
Generalissimo with quickness of sight and 
promptitude in decision. A manner concili- 
atory but commanding went with a courteous 
and unfailing deference in details to the opinion 
of others. That quality might have been in itself 
enough to justify the selection, for the tall, slight, 
sharp-featured Frenchman, Marshal St. Arnaud, 
who was to be Raglan's colleag;ue^ might, it was 

98 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

thought by those who knew him; rather heavily 
tax the patience and self-control of the British 
officers. From his boyhood at Westminster to 
his departure from the Crimea nothing, it was 
said by those who had been mtich with him^ 
could ruffle Fitzroy Somerset's temper or shake 
his presence of mind. 

The popular estimate found its support in 
several anecdotes circulated first throughout 
those regions connected from time immemorial 
with the Commander-in-Chief's family. The 
oldest of these stories went back to Welling- 
tonian days, and connected itself with the lost 
arm. It must have found its way into print 
long since, but remains so illustrative of the 
man as to be repeated here. Late in the day 
of Waterloo, as he stood by the conqueror's 
side, a bullet from the roof of La Haye Sainte 
struck his right elbow, and necessitated the 
amputation of the arm. He went through the 
process without a word till he saw the attempt 
being made to place the limb out of his sight. 
" Hallo ! " he cried, " don't take away that arm 
till I have taken off my ring "—one given him 
by Lady Raglan. 

The home affections, indeed, were always 
strong with him. " I never saw him really 
moved but once," was the experience of W. H. 

99 



Great Victorians 

Russell^, the famous war correspiondent . "He 
was reading a letter ; his eyes filled with tears . 
' It is/ he said, as if apologizing, ' from my 
daughter.' " 

Some years before the period of his Crimean 
comlmand, he had been one of a shooting party 
at Savernake, Lord Ailesbury's place, near Marl- 
borough. Two fingers of the keeper loading 
Lord Jocelyn's gun were blown off. The general 
practitioner of the district, with his surgical in- 
struments, soon appeared, and a painful opera- 
tion, occupying a few minutes, followed. The 
company, to encourage the man, stood round, 
but Lord Raglan was so overcome as nearly 
to faint, and was compelled to withdraw. Yet 
this was the man who had been unmoved in 
the thickest of a hundred fights, and whose 
calmness amidst all the horrors of war had 
passed into a European proverb, causing 
Marshal St. Arnaud to say, " C'est tou jours 
le meme calme qui ne le quitte jamais." 

I pass to the last military commander of the 
old aristocratic school, recalled by me to-day 
even more distinctly than any of his contempo- 
raries. In the year or two years following the 
Crimean War the great sight of the Brighton 
season was Lord Cardigan, of Balaclava fame, 
on horseback in the King's Road. Riding with 

100 



From Wellington to Wolselcy 

him were some of his best-known officers, the 
fourth Sir George Wombwell, Sir Roger Palmer, 
and Harrington Trevelyan, my old personal 
friend and relative, from whom I obtained 
my first knowledge of the Crimean officers, 
their character and appearance. Mounted on 
the beautiful black charger, whose glossy coat 
flashed and glistened in the frequent bursts of 
autumnal sunshine, the leader of the Light 
Brigade seemed his countrymen's ideal of a 
cavalry chief, still in the prime of life. Yet, 
like the Commander-in-Chief, the leader of 
the Light Brigade had first seen light in the 
eighteenth century. Born in 1797, Lord Car- 
digan numbered only eleven years less than 
Lord Raglan. Raglan's keenly observant 
manner, swift, gliding walk on foot, firm, easy 
seat on horseback, made him, at the age ofl 
sixty -six, the admiration and envy of men ten 
years his junior. His contempt of fussy or ad- 
vertising display found no reflection in the 
temper of his French colleague, but his ready 
acquiescence in self-effacement in non-essentials 
won him affection as well as respect among our 
allies. Both the commanders of the whole ex- 
pedition and of the Light Cavalry Brigade were 
middle-aged men or rather more. Lord Raglan, 
the elder by nine years, was sixty-six, Lord 

lOI 



Great Victorians 

Cardigan fifty -seven. Cardigan^ however, 
entered the Army twenty years after Raglan. 
Raglan had been only sixteen when he obtained 
a cornetcy in the 4th Light Dragoons ; Car- 
digan on receiving the same position in the 8th 
Hussars ^ was twenty-seven. 

All the great Generals of the mid -Victorian 
age, not only those already mentioned but those 
presently to be met with, belonged by birth, 
like the Duke of Wellington, to the eighteenth 
century. Like him, too, they all presaged at 
times the human sentiment, the intellectual en- 
lightenment, and the social tolerance which 
passed for nineteenth - century attributes . To 
that rule Cardigan formed the one exception. 
Wellington and Raglan were students as well 
as fighters. Cardigan never opened a book after 
he left school, and showed a patrician contempt 
for habits of intellectual as well as moral self- 
discipline and control. With the absorbing 
selfishness, the imperiousness, the caprice, and 
the inhumanity of the first Frederick William 
of Prussia, he combined, over and above his 
high courage, the solitary merit of a brutal 
frankness. He never pretended to an interest 

^ His later commissions were : 8th Hussars, Lieutenant- 
Colonel, 1830; 15th Hussars, Lieutenant-Colonel, 1832; nth 
Hussars, Lieutenant-Colonel, 1836. In the nth he stayed for 
the remainder of his regimental service. 

J02 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

that he would have despised himself for feeling 
in fellow -officers, men, or any human being. 
With those about him his life was one long 
quarrel about the merest trifles— for instance, one 
day the colour of a bottle, another the size of 
a teacup i— leading, in the case of his equals, 
to duels, and of his inferiors to a heavy dose 
of the lash. He had succeeded to his title in 
the year Queen Victoria came to the throne. 
While Lord Brudenell he had won notoriety by 
the rashness of his charges agiainst officers he 
disliked. 2 At a cost of not much less than 
£30,000 Lord Cardigan in seven years had 
risen by purchase from cornet to Colonel. This 
outlay, it would seem, not only by himself but 
by many of his toadies, was held to justify his 
treatment of other officers as anything but 
gentlemen, and of private soldiers as being 
below the level of the "beasts that perish." 
He flogged one man on Sunday in the riding - 
school, where morning church had just been 
held ; he sentenced another to a hundred 
lashes with an interval of half a minute 
between each, thus protracting the agony 

^ Kinglake, vol. v. p. 13. 

» These accusations, resting only on the gossip of the orderly- 
room, had in 1836 cost him the command of the 15th Hussars, 
and involved his transfer from that regiment to the nth Light 
Dragoons, afterwards known as the nth Hussars, 

IC)3 



Great Victorians 

of the tortured man by something like fifty- 
minutes. In the regiment which he controlled 
there were, during the space of two years, 105 
courts -martial and 700 punishments of de- 
faulters. ^ Public opinion in the middle of the 
nineteenth century was neither so strong nor so 
healthy as one is encouraged to consider it to- 
day. The new wealth, especially if it went with 
the old acres and high titles, covered a multi- 
tude of sins. Lord Cardigan's yacht, a floating 
palace, with its fine cuisine, well-stocked cellar, 
French chef, a host of servants, lay at anchor 
within sight of the battlefields. Even those of 
his countrymen at home who doubted as to the 
appropriateness of the display felt something 
of what they liked to think patriotic pride at 
the impression produced alike on our allies and 
the enemy by luxury and magnificence waiting, 
amid the miseries of war, on the great English 
nobleman, whose recklessness of his own life 
almost equalled his indifference to the suffer- 
ings and sickness and wants of others. Unless 
these considerations are borne in mind, no true 
idea can be formed of the Light Cavalry leader 
as his fellow-countrymen saw him, not only in 
the equestrian promenade on the Brighton sea- 
front, witnessed by the present writer, but as 

* Walpole's "History of England," vol. iv. p. 431. 
104 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

he stood forth to the entire public on the 
Crimean battlefields. 

On a higher social level his contem^poraries 
saw nothing unusual in the insolence which 
with him so often approached or rather passed 
into brutality. "You should," said Hugo 
Bohun in Disraeli's novel, " Lothair," " buy a 
theatre; it is the high mode for a swell." The 
duel in its palmiest period did not in the least 
improve the manners of the haat ton. As Car- 
digan was to others, so others had habitually 
been to him. Lord Alvanley combined some 
faculty of smart sayings with a mastery of the 
art of insult that formed the badge of all his 
caste. On the first day of a hunting season 
the two mien met on a field just out of Melton. 
Taking his hat off, Alvanley said to Cardigan, 
" I hereby beg to apologize to you, not only for 
any past offences, but for any I may commit 
during the coming season." During the same 
year Lord Cardigan's most characteristic quali- 
ties had been shown in a run with the Queen's 
staghounds. From one who rode near him they 
were thus described to mfe. " Lord Cardigan 
never gambled with his life or limb' ; he feared 
nothing, rode straight, had very few mishaps, 
partly because of his magnificent animals, but 
even rnore thanks to his perfect horsemanship, 

105 



Great Victorians 

unfailing deliberation, and sound judgment." 
All this had been seen, not only by his fellow- 
cominanders in the war, but by the Duke ojf 
Wellington, who in reality attached more im- 
portance to the hunting-field than the Eton 
playing-fields as a military training. 

The two rivals of their time on horseback 
were Cardigan and Assheton Smith. On the 
evening before the day's run with the stag- 
hounds the pair met at the dinner-table of a 
Hampshire country house where they were stay- 
ing. They glared at each other like mortal 
enemies about to fight the next day, and rivals 
with a vengeance they then showed themselves. 
They rode a regular race till both their horses 
were exhausted. Cardigan finished two or 
three himdred yards farther than Smith, and so 
claimed the victory. Next to his personal 
valour and the grand scale on which all his 
life was ordered came Lord Cardigan's muni- 
ficent esprit de corps. An old trooper of his 
regiment lived in the cottage near a house where 
I often stayed during the late sixties. I was 
there at a short distance from " Deene," Lord 
Cardigan's place, when the soldier who had 
fought with him in many battles brought news 
that his old Colonel lay dying. " Let us hope," 
was the devout comment of a rustic bystander 

J 06 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

who heard the news, " that he is all safe for 
heaven." " Safe for heaven ! " echoed the man. 
" One who charged the whole Russian Army 
is not likely to- be kept back from going 
where he wishes by all the powers of 
darkness." 

Lord Cardigan^ it was said by some after his 
retirement from service as well as on his death, 
left a name which would for ever be execrated 
because of his severities by the rank and filei 
of the British Army. He did nothing of thei 
sort. All his excesses had, indeed, been for- 
gotten even before he passed away by the 
representative class on which his hand had 
fallen most heavily. His title, the splendour of 
his equipages, his fine soldiership, and, above 
all, the sums lavished by him on the regiment 
which he had made the smartest in the service, 
were remembered with appreciation and pride 
long after his floggings and court -martiallings 
were forgotten. Neither non-commissioned 
officers nor plain privates made the first outcry 
or led the earliest movement against the bar- 
barities of the lash. These, in the military 
estimate, helped to make hard Englishmen, like 
Charles Kingsley's hard, grey weather, or bully- 
ing at school and the most ferocious football 
code. Lord Cardigan's trial and acquittal for 

107 



Great Victorians 

wounding Captain Tuckett in a duel excited not 
the slightest prejudice against him in any 
quarter. This, indeed, was to have been ex- 
pected, from the admission made in the House 
of Commons as lately as 1844, that an officer 
who refused to fight a duel would be liable to 
dismissal.! Some years earlier than that Baron 
Hotham, in charging a jury, said that the 
acquittal of an officer who had slain another 
in a duel would be lovely in the sight of God 
and man. The public commentators on this 
statement boasted that our judicial annals 
had not been darkened with a single con- 
viction for murder in the case of. a duel fairly 
fought .2 

Lord Cardigan's active career had ended 
before the middle-class public opinion, graded 
by the first Reform Bill, had organized itself. 
During the previous intensely aristocratic epoch 
the nation at large only saw in him what 
was seen by the admiring loungers on the 
King's Road, Brighton, after the war— a mag- 
nificent specimen of the coronet power which 
helped to secure England victory over her 
enemies on land or sea, and in other ways made 
itself indispensable to the national welfare. 

^ Hansard, Ixxiii, p. 827. 

« Townsend's "Modern State Trials," vol. i. pp. 152-5. 
108 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

To a type very different from' those so far 
mentioned belonged the nineteenth - century 
captains who had made the soldiers' well -being 
their care, and who at the beginning of their 
course broke with the disciplinarian ideas per- 
sonified by the purchase officers of the Cardi- 
gan school. Among those mentioned for the 
chief command in the Crimea on Lord Raglan's 
death had been the father of the ppresent Lotd 
Knollys. Descended, like the Cecils, from' a 
long line of Elizabethan statesmen, Sir William 
Knollys combined with the presence and manner 
becoming his lineage the shrewd wisdom in 
affairs and the wise tolerance as regards indi- 
viduals that marked the leading men of the 
period in which his family first became famous. 
The founder of the Aldershot camp, as its 
earliest commander he had taken a leading part 
in the enquiries and proposals made by the 
Committee of Military, Education. No officer 
of his standing and experience possessed in an 
equal degree the confidence of the parlia- 
mentary leaders, on both sides, of the Court, and 
of the country. Hence the satisfaction caused 
by his chairmanship of one among the com- 
mittees investigating the food and health 
arnangements of the Crimean army. The tact, 
insight, considerateness, and wisdom shown by 

109 



Great Victorians 

the chairman of this enquiry caused his sub- 
sequent election as " Governor " to the Prince 
of Wales, afterwards King' Edward VII. As 
private secretary, or in somb other capacity he 
continued with the Prince till 1877. In that 
year his secretarial duties were taken over by 
his son, to-day the peer. But after his retire- 
ment from Court office Sir William Knollys had 
many opportunities of suggesting improvements 
in the conditions, and therefore in the efficacy, 
of the Queen's soldiers. In the matter of disci- 
pline he had been the first to point out in Pall 
Mall that an Indian Governor -General under 
the " John Company " dispensation had abolished 
the lash in the Indian Army. At this time Sir 
William Knollys might often have been seen in 
the lobby of the House of Commons, together 
with an eminent Anglo-Indian acquaintance of 
about his own height, some five feet ten. This 
gentleman had a squarely built and closely 
knit frame, a good forehead, strongly marked 
features, whose expression suggested that he 
had known, but overcome, great difficulties. 
The dark, penetrating eyes, the prominent 
cheekbones, the compressed mouth, the long 
and firm upper lip, were those of a man lack- 
ing neither resolution nor sternness in the hour 

of crisis ; altogether an ideal commander of men. 

no 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

His square-turned joints and strength of limb, 
Showed him no carpet-knight so trim, 
But in close fight a champion grim, 
In camp a leader sage. 

Sir Walter Scott's description of his Lord Mar- 
mi on fitted in every detail the then Sir John, 
afterwards Lord, Lawrence of the Punjab ; he 
it was who subsequently became first Chairman 
of the London School Board, and finished in 
England a second career of civil and military 
usefulness, only closed in 1879 by his never- 
to-be-forgotten funeral in Westminster Abbey. 
At the impressive service round his grave be- 
neath the historic roof were repcresented all that 
was royal and in any way great or distinguished 
in the London and England of his time. " Here 
lies John Lawrence, who did his duty to the 
last," were the words chosen by one who knew 
him well as the brief summary of his life and 
character, and therefore an appropriate inscrip- 
tion for his grave. His brother Henry, killed 
in the Mutiny, had already been laid to his rest 
at Lucknow with the sentence " Who tried to do 
his duty " written after his name. 

These famous brothers in their different ways 
contributed to the improvement in the life and 
instruction of the private soldier^ thus far syste- 
matically neglected by the great Generals who 

III 



Great Victorians 

had led him' to victory. Between Henry and 
John Lawrence there existed many points of 
resemblance as well as contrast. The elder 
brother, a soldier by profession, became best 
known by his political and civil work. Lord 
Lawrence, a member of the Civil Service, showed 
throughout his course a striking aptitude for 
military affairs. Both in an equal degree never 
shrank from responsibility. John Lawrence had 
so disciplined by education a natural genius for 
detail as in all things concerning the duties of 
peace to becomfe the most trustworthy of sub- 
ordinates and the most efficient of colleagues. 
Both men had learned the business of their life 
in the same school, under one teacher, and 
together with common class-fellows. 

In 1852 the Duke of Wellington's successor 
as Commander-in-Chief was his old comrade in 
arms, almost exactly his coeval, and his second 
in the duel with Lord Winchilsea. Lord Hard- 
inge (born 1785) had proved himself a great 
commander in the same campaigns as Lord 
Cough during the first Sikh War, and received 
on his return to England the national welcome 
given to heroes as well as promotion to the rank 
of Viscount. Before his establishment in the 
supreme command at home he had, as Governor- 
General of India, trained the two Lawrences to 

112 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

the work that showed their greatness. Gener- 
ally agreed in their views of Indian administra- 
tion, they differed from each other on the subject 
of the Punjab . John advocated annexation ; 
Henry resisted it, in deference, as he said, to 
the scruples of native Indians. On that point 
he could speak with authority, because he had 
won in a signal degree the confidence of the 
Sikhs, with whom he had been the first 
Resident . 

The conclusion of the first and second Sikh 
Wars in 1846 and 1849 respectively restored 
to England some of her most famous soldiers. 
Henry Lawrence came back on furlough to re- 
cruit his health. Hardingie settled in his native 
land permanently with the title of Viscount and 
a pension amounting to £8,000, £5,000 from 
the East India Company and £3,000 from the 
Government ; Gough, already created a Baron 
in 1846, became a Viscount, with liberal money 
provision from the East India Company as well 
as from the Treasury, and further received a 
beautifully situated place^ Lough Cutra Castle, 
in Western Galway. Standing on a picturesque 
sheet of water, famous for its fish, the house 
had been bought from' the Encumbered Estates 
Court, and had been decorated and furnished 
throughout after designs by Grace. Many of 

113 H 



Great Victorians 

the walls were covered, not with paper, but with 
a light brown leather, on which were stamped 
in gold or coloured letters the names of the 
owner's great Indian victories from Mudki, in 
1845, to Gujerat, in 1849. Before the last of 
these came another fight even more famous, and 
proportionately prominent in the mural records 
of the home in his native isle given to that 
cross betwixt " a bulldog and a salamander," as 
" Paddy Gough " was styled in the spirited lyric 
which deserves to be better known than it is.^ 

^ Chillianwallah. 
'Twas near the famed Hydaspes' banks 
Where flourished once the great king Porus, 
Lord Gough incensed the British ranks, 
And the Sikh artillery spoke in chorus ; 
The troops were tired, the Khalsa fired. 
And they're the lads that seldom bungle. 
Quoth Gough at the noise, "Fix bayonets, boys. 
And drive those blackguards out of the jungle ! " 

Sabres drawn, bayonets fixed, 

Fight where fought brave Alexander : 

Paddy Gough's a cross betwixt 

A bulldog and a salamander. 

On every side our luck we tried. 
And found the showers of shot and shell come ; 
Where'er we went to our sweet content 
The Sikhs they gave us a pleasant welcome. 
The guns went smack, the rocks went crack, 
The hills were black o'er Chillianwallah; 
But our General's Irish blood was up. 
And the battle-cry was " Faugh-a-ballagh ! " 
114 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

Lord Gough saw compiaratively little of the 
pleasant demesne bestowed on him by a grateful 

The bould dragoons they dashed right thro' 
And back again — 'twas mighty plucky; 

But the th Bengals disliked the balls, 

And each of them he cut his lucky ! 

But 'twould have done old Homer good 

To see the charge of General Gilbert's; 

Right and left his way he cleft, 

And smashed their skulls like mouldy filberts. 

General Dawes, he gained applause, 

His fighting lads were all in clover ; 

'Twas as good to be there as at Donnybrook Fair, 

And no police when the fun was over. 

At length the Sikhs they cut like bricks, 

Sheer Singh sheered off, nor looked behind him; 

And old Sheer Clutter did swear and splutter, 

But nobody cared at all to mind him. 

And none shall scoff at brave old Gough. 

Oh, he's a chief of a soldier's choosing ; 

We lads abroad will always applaud. 

Though the Times at home be always abusing. 

By Jumna's side their might he tried, 

And quelled the pride of the Khalsa gunners, 

And laid them fiat at Guzerat 

With his English-Irish dose of stunners. 

Horatius Flaccus sang — they say — 

About "quae loca fabulosus 

Lambit Hydaspes," and his lay 

Our General's high renown discloses ; 

Sure, with the most enchanting grace 

He goes against those Punjab caitiffs, 

Horace's river licks the place, 

But Paddy Gough he licks the natives, 

115 



Great Victorians 

country. He gave it over almost entirely to his 
son with his young family, and found a retire- 
ment for his declining days at St. Helens, at 
no great distance from Dublin, where, almost to 
the last, he might occasionally be seen in the 
famous bow window of the Kildare Street Club. 
At St. Helens he now and then received a visit 
from the very few survivors of his active years ; 
but when I was permitted to approach him during 
the sixties I recollect hearing it said that the most 
frequent pilgrims to his retreat came from the 
other side of the Atlantic, where every incident 
in his illustrious course was followed with the 
minutest interest by the descendants of the 
soldiers who had served under him'. 

The new military era, dating from the great 
Duke's disappearance, associates itself not only 
with the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Hardinge, 
also the ex-Governor-General of India, but with 
the most distinguished of his staff, his right-hand 
man in all important business, and his assessor in 
all military judgments and decisions. This was 
Adjutant -General Wetherall, remarkable for the 
faculty of ingratiating himself with the most arbi- 
trary of military autocrats and of winning entire 
confidence from his inferiors of every grade. The 
entire body of the Queen's forces seemted to him 

an open book ; he knew everything about the 

ii6 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

moral and material state of the troops quartered 
in every British barrack and at every foreign 
station. He united the gift of professional 
omniscience with the power of close and con- 
vincing statement that made his dispatches and 
the general orders drawn up under his chief's 
supervision literary models for two generations of 
officers. Queen Victoria's letter to Lady Raglan 
on her husband's death in the June of 1855 has 
been justly called a perfect specimen of episto- 
lary English. The general order produced by 
the same melancholy event, prepared by 
Wetherall for Lord Hardinge's approval, deserves 
praise scarcely less high. There could not have 
been a more salutary and serviceable combina- 
tion than that of the Com*mander-in-Chief and 
the Adjutant -General. Hardinge had displayed 
the utmost gallantry in the Peninsular War. 
Twice wounded, at Vimiera and Vittoria, he 
brought back with him not only brilliant experi- 
ence, but the hard-and-fast opinions common to 
his school, a belief in old traditions, and, not- 
withstanding his real interest in the welfare of the 
rank and file, a decided prejudice against sweep- 
ing reforms, though not in quite the same degree 
as Lord Raglan. The Commander-in-Chief 
never missed attendance at the War Office com- 
mittees, which always included at least one 

117 



Great Victorians 

Cabinet Minister with one military or naval officer 
of first-rate experience and authority. Lord 
Hardinge had already fallen once or twice a 
little out of favour at the Court for filling military 
commands independently of the Government, and 
without, as Erince Albert complained, any refer- 
ence to the Queen . In the May of 1 8 5 4 he was 
much annoyed by the constant complaints about 
tents at the scene of war being uninhabitable 
from lack of proper equipments. " Surely there 
could be no better proof of our soldiers being well 
looked after than the Erench complaint that the 
English had tents, gear, and every comfort. In 
the Peninsula they had no tents at all till the Duke 
got them' a year or two before the end of the war. 
And now, at this early stage of the present 
struggle, the demand was not only for tents but 
for chairs inside them' ! " 

The truth is, by the year 1854 Lord Hardinge's 
susceptibilities had becomfe morbidly developed. 
No great proconsul had ever enjoyed mJore keenly 
the feting by Society and the masses which 
awaited him on his return. He had been the 
hero of a thousand country houses, and a promi- 
nent figure in some of the best anecdotes of the 
country-house season. Such was the character- 
istic utterance credited to Mrs. Disraeli, after- 
wards Viscountess Beaconsfield, and sometimes 

118 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

mbre impulsive than felicitous in her reniarks. 
At a house where the Disraelis were staying Lord 
Hardinge happened to occupy the next room. 
At the breakfast -table next morning Mrs. 
Disraeli said : " Oh, Lord Hardinge, am I not 
the most fortunate of women? Might I not well 
say to myself, as I did on waking, ' Surely 
I am in luck to have been sleeping between 
the greatest orator and the greatest warrior of 
the day ! ' " Lady Hardinge did not seem' to 
appreciate the point of this pleasing little bit of 
prattle as mlich as the rest of the company. 

Lord Hardinge showed himself a true type, 
not only of the Wellingtonian officer, but of the 
Anglo-Indian magnate. Men of calibre and 
achievements far inferior to hisy returning from 
posts of authority in our Asiatic Empire to their 
native land, have seldom' been famous for any 
faculty of self-effacement. Whether soldiers or 
civilians, lay or clerical, ex-doctors or field-mar- 
shals, they have been apit to bring with them 
their autocratic manner and their dictatorial habit 
of speech, carrying themselves, whether entering 
a public conveyance or a lady's drawing-room, 
as men whose word is law, or as demi-gods whose 
breasts are ablaze with orders. This infirmity 
was not so conspicuous in Hardinge as in thie 

ex-officers of native regiments, the competition 

119 



Great Victorians 

" wallahs " and the ex-" collectors " of a later 
day. To the last, however, he could not always 
restrain within politic limits a love of power 
almost feminine in its intensity, and a habit of 
self-assertion such as might have been pardon- 
able in smaller men, but was singularly indiscreet 
and suicidal in himself. He had not been back 
in England more than a year or two when certain 
newspaper and other irresponsible criticism's of 
his Punjab settlement stung him into open dis- 
plays of intolerance and resentment that drew 
forth words of kindly caution from Wellington, 
productive of no permanent effect. During the 
Crimean War he was at daggers drawn with the 
Duke of Newcastle— indeed, with all the Cabinet, 
Under-Secretaries of State, and private secre- 
taries. This chronic vexation of spirit at last 
defied all efforts to control, and reacted disas- 
trously upon his health. On July 8, 1856, the 
Queen reviewed the troops at Aldershot, and 
made them a speech. Lord Hardinge, not, as 
has been said, while giving a subordinate an 
order or a rebuke, but while talking to his Sove- 
reign, was seized in her presence with a fit. He 
was brought back to London almost, as it seemed, 
moribund. Gradually he became well enough 
for removal to Tunbridge Wells. Here, at South 
Park, on September 24, 1856, the end came. 

120 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

Charges and counter-charges^ censures and 
recriminations, are as inseparable from the 
councils of war as jealousies and competitions 
from the conduct of rival chiefs in the field. 
These, however ruffled might be his own spirit, 
Hardinge did his best^, often successfully, to com- 
pose. The relations between some among the 
most famous of his contemporaries, of rank 
scarcely lower than his own, were mlarked by 
an entire freedom from personal animosities^ open 
or suppressed. The " Bayard of India," as Sir 
James Outram has been rightly called^ showed 
qualities that made his whole life a morally en- 
nobling lesson. Offered in the Mutiny the chief 
command by Lord Canning, he said, " The work 
was begun by Havelock, let him' have the crown- 
ing glory of the achievement." Outram had 
taken his part in the relief of Lucknow^ only 
afterwards to find himself besieged there. The 
second relief of Lucknow brought into promi- 
nence probably the best remembered of the great 
soldiers who adorned that period. 

In 1859 the return to England of Sir Colin 
Campbell as Eield-Marshal Lord Clyde ac- 
quainted his countrymen of all sorts and con- 
ditions at home with the pleasantest as well as 
the noblest specimen of' lan Anglo-Indian celebrity 

that they had ever seen. He mixed freely with 

121 



Great Victorians 

every class in town and country. Simple, un- 
afifected in his manner and tastes, he impressed 
high and low alike as genuinely unconscious of 
his own greatness. The delight of a schoolboy 
on his home-coming for the holidays, and his 
eager curiosity for the welfare of the rabbits or 
guinea-pigs that he has not seen and the pony 
he has not ridden since the beginning of last 
half, were recalled to one by the beaming grati- 
fication which this fine old man, straight and erect 
in figure as a youth, with his short-cut hair stand- 
ing up on his head, did not care to repress at 
finding himself in the company of the friends of 
the first Indian Viceroy, Lord Canning, who had 
taken good care that all doors should be open to 
the returned hero. I have heard from those who 
stood by when he took his seat on the crimson 
leather benches of the unconcealed pleasure with 
which he viewed every detail in the gorgeous 
decorations of the chamber, and showed his ac- 
quaintance with the doings of those among its 
leaders who, as some would have thought, would 
have been little more than names to him. For 
how could these personages possibly be anything 
else to the Glasgow carpenter's son, who only left 
his school at Gosport in 1808 to serve on the 
Walcheren Expedition of the next year, went 
through the whole Peninsular War, then took part 

122 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

in the expedition to the United States, and who 
had no sooner ended his Sikh campiaigns than 
he hastened off to the Crimea in command of the 
Highland Brigade and won the victory of the 
Alma? ".Yes," he said simply, "the last time I 
was in London the new Houses of Parliament 
were finished, and I think open, but I never went 
over them till now. And then among the faces 
I recognized several pointed out to me a genera- 
tion ago, when I was first brought on a country 
cousin's visit to London. Lord Derby with the 
eagle beak and the eyes flashing fire is quite 
unchanged, and that is Lord Granville ; I should 
have known him from his portraits. I never 
miss, and no one ought to miss, reading his 
speeches ; for whatever their subject or their 
length there is always something chivalrous in 
them. And that handsome man yonder_, Lord 
Sydney ! Ah, I thought so ; he married Lord 
Anglesey's daughter . ' ' 

In the provinces he did not confine himself 
to the dwellings of the rich and great ; and 
wherever he went he brought smiles and joy 
with him. One used to hear of him in my earlier 
days as enjoying above all things a romp with 
children in the haymaking season. 

Among the great Anglo-Indian soldiers, my 

impressions of whom come not from tradition but 

123 



Great Victorians 

personal knowledge, the first I will mention is 
Sir Donald Stewiart. During some of the years 
between 1870 and 1880 the present writer 
happened to be living in Sussex Place, South 
Kensington, quite close to Stewart's house in 
•Harrington Gardejns, land was a constant walker 
in Kensington Gardens, often having for my 
companion a young friend, a well-known Anglo- 
Indian civilian's son. We met almost daily a 
noticeable figure, whose bronze complexion and 
heavily hanging moustache proclaimed him to 
be what young Nadab, the improvisatore at the 
" Cave of Harmony " in " The Newcomes," would 
have called "a military gent from Hindostan." 
That which chiefly struck one was not the 
strongly knit, supple frame, retaining on the 
threshold of old age the vigour and ease of 
youthful movement, but the extraordinarily strong 
Norse features, which might have belonged to a 
Viking, but were really those of a Scotch High- 
lander with a Scandinavian strain in his blood. 
" I think," said my young companion to me one 
day, " this must be an old friend of my father ; 
I Avill go up to him and find out." Suiting the 
action to the word, the lad was off, and the Kield- 
Marshal, for such he proved to be, asked the 
boy his father's name. Hearing it, he said in the 
kindest voice imaginable, " I might have known, 

124 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

for I recall your father's face and see a likeness 
to it in your own." The accidental acquaintance 
with Sir Donald Stewart thus begun grew by his 
courtesy into friendship. " A sublime sylvan plea- 
saunce superior to the cedars of Lebanon and 
inferior only in extent to the chestnut forest of 
Anatolia ! " So Disraeli had described the 
stretch of turf and foliage surrounding William 
Ill's palace in the "old Court suburb." The 
description took Sir Donald's fancy ; he had 
not^ he said, he'ard it before. " In fact," he 
quietly added, " my occupations have interfered 
a good deal with my reading." Here our occa- 
sional strolls together continued till Sir Donald's 
return to India in 1880, followed, as that was, 
by his appointment, first to the Viceroy's Council 
at Calcutta, secondly to the Indian Commander- 
ship-in-Chief, held by him' from April 1881 to 
November 1885. Then I saw' him once more 
as one among the Secretary of State's Councillors 
at the India Office. By this time his Indian 
career was beginning to be seen at home in just 
perspective and its real greatness. His com- 
mand of our troops in Afghanistan after Cava- 
gnari's death, from September 1879 to the end of 
the war, had been an almost unknown chapter 
of history, owing to a mtodesty amounting to self- 
abnegation, and an almost nervous dread of 

125 



Great Victorians 

seeming to share the popular passion of self- 
advertisement. Such were the ruling principles 
of his course from the day on which he first came 
to notice in the siege of Delhi in 1857. 
Bracketed with the Lawrences and other great 
men of that period, he disclaimed the idea of 
being a political soldier of the Henry Lawrence 
type. The only civil post he ever held was the 
Chief Commissioner ship of the An damans before 
his appointment to the command of the troops 
in Southern Afghanistan at the beginning of the 
war in 1878. There could be no better sumtning 
up of his character than was given by the present 
Lord Bryce, then Oxford Professor of Civil Law, 
when he received his D.C.L. in 1886 : " One of 
the first of living generals, whose greatness would 
be better known were it not for his singular 
modesty as well as dignity of character." 

When, as already described, I first saw him in 
Kensington Gardens during the early eighties, 
his presence was very striking. Throughout 
his later years his appearance had become 
familiar, not only to the entire home public but 
to many of his colonial fellow -subjects. A keen 
sportsman, equally good with rod and gun, with 
fur or feather, he visited his old school friend. 
Lord Mount Stephen, in Canada, and delighted 

the spprting experts gathered to meet him by 

126 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

the boyish enthusiasm with which he entered into 
all their pursuits, and the high satisfaction with 
which, from a difficult piece of water, he landed 
his first salmon. 

There are some still living who can remember 
the zest with which, during his last years, he 
handled, on most afternoons, the cue in the 
billiard -rooms of the Senior or the Athenaeum. 
But the sight that dwelt longest in the popular 
memory was that of the old Field- Marshal in the 
Chelsea Hospital garden on a summer afternoon, 
entertaining, not only his personal friends but 
some of the veteran rank and file who had fought 
under his comniand. How this and other signs 
of interest in their welfare were appreciated might 
be gathered from the beaming expression of plea- 
sure and pride with which, at the Jubilee of 1887, 
the Chelsea Pensioners massed together on Con- 
stitution Hill, and watched their Governor in his 
Field-Marshal's uniform ride past. " Share and 
share alike " had been his motto in ensuring the 
comforts of the rank and file during his cam- 
paigns. That formed the practical expression 
of the opinion experience had taught him' about 
the British soldier. " Some of them," he would 
say, " may occasionally take a little too much to 
drink and be wild ; but see them on a long 

march without food or rest^ see them in a tight 

127 



Great Victorians 

corner with only a few rags to their backs and 
soleless boots, and you see then that the British 
soldier is the finest man in the world." 

Spartant nactus es, hanc exorna. During the 
nineteenth century's second half Whitehall spoke 
of Free Trade as Cobdenism, and looked upon 
it as an unlovely Sparta whose embellishment was 
next dOor to impossible. It found, however, 
its ornament in another Anglo-Indian soldier of 
the Donald Stewart period, trained in a wider 
and more variously cosmopolitan school than that 
of Sir Donald Stewart himself. As regards per- 
sonal antecedents, official occupation, personal 
appearance, accomplishments, and tastes, Sir 
Louis Mallet personified a contrast to the popular 
notion of Cobdenism and everything connected 
with the Manchester school. Yet it was as a 
representative of this school that he was apipointed 
to the Secretary of State's Council at the India 
Office in 1870. Before then he had shaken off 
the Toryism of family traditions and youthful 
surroundings^ and had become Cobden's asso- 
ciate in arranging the Anglo -Erench Commercial 
Treaty, as well as other conventions of a like 
character in which England figured as one of 
the principals. Sir Louis Mallet's father, the 
French publicist. Mallet du Pan, had fled to Eng- 
land during the Erench Revolution, reached it 

128 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

while William Pitt was Premier, found in that 
statesman a patron and protector, and received 
from him a place in a Government office for his 
son. All that youth's first prepossessions were 
naturally anti-Whig and anti -Liberal. 

His French origin gave himi a grace, a finish 
of manner^ and a lightness of touch which his 
official education, at Whitehall first, and on his 
errands with Cobden afterwards, improved into 
genuine diplomatic tact. Abroad and at home 
he had been brought into contact, mbre or less 
close, with the best-known characters of his time. 
While in Paris he had dined with Lord Hertford, 
the original of Thackeray's Lord Steyne, at his 
villa, " La Bagatelle," and had heard one of his 
most characteristic remarks. Lord Robert Sey- 
mour had asked him a question which for some 
reason he resented, to meet with the rejoinder : 
" Pray, would you have the goodness to tell me 
whether you are my father, my grandfather, 
my uncle, or my maiden aunt? Good-night." 
Another Parisian experience of Sir Louis Mallet 
was of a more tragical kind. He had been dining 
with a friend in a private room at the Cafe Riche. 
Afterwards, when on the landing outside and 
preparing to descend, another diner in an adjoin- 
ing apartment lost his footing at the head of the 
highly polished stairs, fell down, and, before any 

129 I 



Great Victorians 

help could be rendered, had fallen on the back 
of his head (against every other stair till the 
ground floor was reached. There Mallet saw the 
grandest nobleman of his day, the Duke of 
Hamilton, taken up stone dead and carried off. 
During his Enghsh travels, chiefly in Lancashire 
and the north, he stayed with Sir John Potter, a 
great Manchester personage, and met among the 
company Benjamin Disraeli. When the guests 
had gone Mallet heard the future Lord Beacons- 
field say to his host : " Most well-to-do, highly 
principled, and worthy gentlemen all your 
friends, my dear Sir John, are— in fact, just the 
sort of persons out of whom clever fellows, like 
me, make our fortune." 

Commercial consideration had placed Mallet in 
the Secretary of State's Indian Council. A few 
years later this select body was joined by General 
Sir Henry Norman as the military representative 
of the Strachey and Lawrence school, in oppo- 
sition to the " forward and scientific frontier " 
policy in favour with the first Earl of Lytton and 
Lord Beaconsfield. Norman's death removed a 
man who, like other Anglo-Indian members of 
his class, combined administrative with military 
genius in a degree that brought him, from Glad- 
stone, a pressing offer to imdertake the Indian 
Viceroy ship. Since his death while Governor of 

130 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

Chelsea Hospital there has been nearly a clean 
sweep of the later military generation for which 
the warrior representatives of their age, now re- 
called, acted as forerunners. To the Duke of 
Wellington and officers trained in his traditions 
the private soldier was naturally and necessarily 
a blackguard. The greater his courage and 
efficiency, the greater his blackguardism. There- 
fore in the interest of the Army itself and the 
nation for which its victories were won, no serious 
attempt at improving the condition, moral or 
material, of the rank and file could be made suc- 
cessfully, or need be made at all . Other Generals 
of eighteenth -century birth held much the same 
opinion. Cardigan, it has been seen, acted on 
the principle that it was not enough for the British 
private to be blackguardized by circumstances, 
but that, like his executioners, he must be brutal- 
ized by the lash. To this effect, at least, the 
Army disciplinarians of a later and humaner 
school, just mentioned, summed up the theory 
and practice of their predecessors . After Raglan 
camie Hardinge, who, helped by Adjutant-General 
Wetherall, showed a disjwsition to a milder 
regime. The reaction from the old ferocity was 
carried farther by the great commanders during, 
the Mutiny, the Lawrences, Sir Donald Stewart, 
and pre-eminently Lord Roberts, who in 1858 

131 



Great Victorians 

won his V.C. for killing single-handed a success- 
sion of Sepoys intent on attacking the little 
stronghold which sheltered English women and 
children. My acquaintance with Lord Roberts 
began in 1882, on a Channel steamer outward 
bound between Folkestone and Boulogne. The 
same boat carried also Lord Salisbury, whose 
loathing of the shortest sea voyage amounted to 
positive terror. Some of those feelings seemed, 
for that occasion only, shared by his illustrious 
fellow -voyager ; or it may be that Lord Roberts' 
kindly solicitude for his famous friend caused 
him to remain on deck by his side while the good 
ship rocked to and fro like a swing at a fair, with 
breaker-washed deck. At any rate, there the 
two men stood, each clasping with his hands two 
strong, upright iron poles, one on either side, 
seldom giving a look to the sea, but accommo- 
dating their bodies, after the manner I have de- 
scribed, to the movement of the ship. Neither 
showed any sign of sea -sickness ; for a few 
seconds Lord Roberts, however, had a tired look. 
I handed him a glass of water. In the true Sir 
Philip Sidney spirit he passed it on to Lord Salis- 
bury, as who would say, " Thy necessity is greater 
than mine." Older than Wolseley by a single year, 
Roberts became the first famous officer who syste- 
matically concerned himself with lifting Tommy 

132 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

Atkins to a higher plane of social and spiritual 
civilization. By precept and example Wolseley 
laboured in the same direction. These two great 
Generals of our time also resembled each other, 
not only in their professional qualifications and 
reforming zeal, but in their opportunities of show- 
ing their capacity for command. Sir George 
Hamley, who had done as much as either towards 
creating the British officer of the new school, 
never had the chance of doing justice to his 
genius as a captain in the field. This, too, was 
the lot of Sir John Adye, Lintorn Simmons, Lyne- 
doch, and Hill. It is an old saying that a soldier 
should have no politics. This in 1878 meant 
that he must be above all suspicion of Liberal 
proclivities. Adye had the misfortune to stand 
high in the confidence of Lord Carnarvon and 
Lord Derby, who left the Disraeli Cabinet during 
the Jingo epidemic of that year. 

Wolseley's position, rise, and progress cannot 
be rightly understood without recalling what 
happened in Pall Mall and Whitehall from 1868 
to 1874. During those years the War Office was 
controlled by one of the first, if not the very first, 
of those who were to fulfil Benjamin Jowett's 
ambition of seeing the British Empire at home 
or abroad, at war or at peace, run by his own 
pupils . 

133 



Great Victorians 

This was Cardwell, the most famous of sur- 
viving Peehtes, whom, during my Oxford days, 
I had known, chiefly at a distance, as a BalUol 
Don, but had also had for a companion in my 
rides when visiting friends in that part of Oxford- 
shire where Cardwell himself had some private 
property, and which almost borders on Warren 
Hastings' Worcestershire Daylesford. Cardwell 
had not quite as short and sharp a way with 
young men as his Winchester contemporary, 
Robert Lowe. Equal to him', and even to the 
chief ornament of that studious set, Linwood, 
in width and thoroughness of classical reading, 
he combined with it a smattering of science and 
insight into European affairs then seldom pre- 
sented by Oxford common-rooms. Cardwell's 
manners, indeed, were stiff and donnish ; they 
often tried the loyalty of his Oxford constituents ; 
they may well have had something to do with 
prejudicing the class with which he had officially 
to do against the reforms he was to introduce and 
administer . In 1 8 7 i , the third year of Card- 
well's War Secretaryship, Sir Charles Trevelyan's 
long efforts for the abolition of " purchase " 
achieved success. The next year compilete effect 
was given to the Army education proposals of 
1868. The revolutionizing of the regimental 
system began. Gladstonianism and its works, 

134 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

was the complaint at every military club and 
mess, had closed a military career against that 
class which, in a hundred campaigns, had shown 
it could fight as well as play. Henceforth the 
helmeted, goggled professor of the Prussian 
variety would supersede the athletic and sport- 
ing British officer. Farewell, therefore, for ever 
the dashing leaders of foot and horse who had 
learned how to lead their men to victory on the 
playing fields of Eton. 

The future conqueror of Tel-el-Kebir and those 
about him accepted the fresh regime, a democrat- 
ized War Office and a transformed soldiery. 
Promotion by merit had replaced that by " pur- 
chase." Long service had gone out, linked bat- 
talions had come in. The officers of the new 
order soon showed that their skill in wielding 
the pen was not greater than their power of 
handling the sword or gun. Henry Brackenbury 
and Evelyn Wood were acknowledged as repre- 
sentative specimens of the order which had 
opened when military commissions ceased to be 
matters of merchandise. 

At this present time (December 191 5), 
since Henry Brackenbury's death in the early 
summer of last year, the only two members of 
the Wolseley school left are Sir Evelyn Wood 
and Sir Coleridge Grove. The precedent in the 

135 



Great Victorians 

culture and intellect characteristic of the Wol- 
seley school was set by the men who called it 
into being, or at least made it possible. Sir 
Charles Trevelyan married Macaulay's daughter ; 
their son, having just missed being senior classic 
at Cambridge, has long since won equal dis- 
tinction in parliamentary or official life and in 
letters ; Cardwell, like his early chief, Sir Robert 
Peel (one of whose trustees he became), and his 
later chief, Gladstone, took a double first. 
Among the soldiers of the two surviving 
Wolseleyites, Sir Coleridge Grove, a Balliol 
exhibitioner, won a mathematical first both in 
Moderations and in Finals ; and, but for his 
preoccupation in the official field, would have 
commanded with his pen a distinction like that 
bestowed on his old associate in arms, Wood, 
by his "The Crimea in 1854-94," "Cavalry at 
Waterloo," " From Midshipman to Field-Mar- 
shal," and " The Revolt in Hindustan." 

There were heroes before Agamemnon ; and 
the world had not to wait for the writing soldier 
in the first rank of authorship till Wolseley and 
his men came, or to find them exclusively within 
those limits. Something might be said in favour 
of the earliest war correspondent having been, 
not Crabb Robinson but Xenophon, attached to 
the Persian Headquarters Staff, who wrote " The 

136 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

Anabasis." The Attic country gentleman whose 
dehverance by Socrates at the battle of Delium 
preserved him to write " The Retreat of the Ten 
Thousand," had for the first of his descendants 
with the English pen the historian of the Penin- 
sular War. In the literary succession which 
followed, Roberts and Wolseley had the most 
conspicuous, but not the only places. ^ Before 
Wolseley's men became a power in the Press the 
two Hoziers, John and Henry, were Saturday 
Review -ers under Douglas Cook, and had been 
welcomed into the comity of Printing House 
Square by Delane : Henry, indeed, with occa- 
sional breaks, was attached to the great news- 
paper from 1866 onwards, and was one of its 
regular correspondents during the Austro -Prus- 
sian and the Franco -Gernian Wars. During this 
period there were three noticeable brothers, each 
connected with the Army, two distinguished by 
active service. These were Sir William Fraser, 
whose chambers in St. James's Street were a 
miniature museum of curios, autographs, first 
editions, presentation volumes from, among 

^ Wolseley's books, " Narrative of the War with China in 
i860," "The Soldier's Pocket-Book," "Field Manoeuvres," 
"Marley Castle," "Life of Marlborough," "The Decline and 
Fall of Napoleon," were published from 1862 to 1895. Roberts' 
books, " The Rise of Wellington " and " Forty-Qne Years in 
India," were published from 1895 to 1897. 

137 



Great Victorians 

others, Thackeray and Bulwer-Lytton ; and 
Charles Fraser, who had brought back the Vic- 
toria Cross from his Crimean and Indian services. 
The other member of the family was Keith, the 
handsomest of these brothers, in whom Ouida, 
as she might be excused for doing, recognized 
the genuine original, not only of her own typical' 
beau sabreur, but of the detrimental heroes of 
Court and camp whom she first knew in the 
pages of her master, the author of " Guy Living- 
stone." Keith once commanded the " Blues," 
and, in the Fortnightly Review during my 
editorship, wrote one or two articles about the 
uses of cavalry, extensively translated on the 
Continent, and studied almost as a textbook in 
Vienna and Berlin. The eldest, the baronet, 
moving from his schooldays to the spirit of the 
age, had become the pioneer of its taste for old 
china, bric-a-brac, curiosity collecting generally, 
for compiling autobiographies and memoirs, and 
for dabbling in poetry with other form's of belles 
lettres. The second brother, Charles, shared with 
Sir Henry Calcraft the distinction of being a 
typically consummate man of the world, an oracle 
on all social subjects, a model and a teacher in 
the arts of fashionable success and the compto- 
sition of fashionable feuds. No one man of his 
day prevented the unmaking of more marriages, 

138 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

or by his skill in social diplomacy arranged 
rnore family quarrels, or timed these good offices 
so happily that the oil fell upon the troubled 
waters exactly at the psychological moment. 
" Charles for courage," it used to be said, " Keith 
for beauty, and William for books." Their old 
Eton master, W. G. Cookesley, viewed these kins- 
men somewhat differently. " Charles," he once 
said, " had more of sound literary taste in his 
little finger than William in his whole body, and, 
unlike William again, had assimilated as well as 
remembered both the sound and sense of his 
school reading, whether in the form or in the 
library." 

The intellectual, social, and parofessional pre- 
cedent of the Erasers further fulfilled itself in 
their Eton contemporary, Henry Brackenbury, 
Lord Wolseley's right-hand man, not only in the 
field, but in co-operating with Evelyn Wood, 
Coleridge Grove, and Maurice to quicken and 
train, with the pen as well as the sword, during 
the seventies, the gradually reviving zeal of 
soldiers for their vocation. Such were the per- 
sonal forces in the Army that, personified 
conspicuously by Brackenbury, replaced the 
dandy warriors of Knightsbridge, Aldershot, 
and Windsor by a Kitchener, a Smith-Dorrien, 
a French, and a Douglas Haig. When 

139 



Great Victorians 

I first came to know him intimately he had just 
been engaged by Thomas Hamber to write in 
the Standard the diary of the Franco -Prussian 
War. In those days I was myself told off for 
a daily leader on non -military topics of the hour, 
and had every opportunity of watching on the 
spot the thoroughness of Brackenbury's methods. 
To be within call at a moment's notice of Shoe 
Lane he had taken rooms at the Cannon Street 
Hotel. There, on the telegraphic data brought 
him from the office, he broke the neck of his 
article. Before closing up he came himself to 
the premises to embody in the final paragraphs 
the dispatches from the seat of war which came 
pouring in almost to the time when the paper went 
to press. Skill in unravelling the telegraphic con- 
fusion and contradiction of the military news 
which, printed as it is received, often tells the 
public less than nothing, was an art thoroughly 
mastered by all of the Wolseley school. Bracken- 
bury was among the first to practise it in perfec- 
tion in his Standard articles. Something like 
military second sight was shown by him when, in 
the small hours of August 26, 1870, he solved 
the mystery of Bazaine's movements, which had 
puzzled all professional critics, by a real flash of 
inspiration. MacMahon, he conjectured, was 
marching round the Prussian flank to meet 

140 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

Bazaine before Metz. Hatnber had seen some- 
thing of warfare when serving with the Swiss 
legion in the Crimea. He had also a very quick 
eye for a good point. He came into the room 
where I was grinding away at my nightly leader 
and exultantly brandished Brackenbury's proof, 
which he had just read. " This/' he exclaimed, 
" will be the newspaper hit of to-morrow, and 
will be looked back upon as the one Press pro- 
phecy about the war that was fulfilled ! " 

Popularly passing for a pure product of the 
Emerald Isle, Lord Wolseley was an Irishman 
only in about the same degree as his right-hand 
man now recalled. Dublin, indeed, had given 
him birth, but his family belonged to Stafford- 
shire. His leading pupil's father, William 
Brackenbury, of Aswarby, Lincolnshire, had 
married an Irishwoman, Miss Maria Atkinson, 
of Newry. A turn for soldiership was in the 
blood of the younger son of that marriage. In 
the fifteenth century a Sir Robert Bracken - 
bury headed the Lincolnshire malcontents against 
Richard III. Before the landing of Henry Tudor 
he rallied his country partisans round him close 
to the exact spot on which, during the Bosworth 
fight, Sir William Stanley placed the dead Plan- 
tagenet's crown upon the first King of the new 

dynasty. Lord Wolseley and Brackenbury were 

141 



Great Victorians 

united, not only by professional sympathies, but 
by certain similarities of temperament, perhaps 
as a result of the Hibernian blood in the veins of 
both. ,The stern soldier showed himself in the 
composition of each. But both also in feeling 
not less than manner sometimes revealed a 
woman's gentleness, occasionally verging on 
sentimentalism. 

To-day Sir Evelyn Wood is the sole survivor 
of a party which in 1894, on board Sir John 
Pender's steam yacht Electra, visited the Crimea. 
The voyagers included, in addition to Wolseley, 
the American Minister, Bayard, Lord Kelvin, and 
Sir John Mowbray. They were approaching the 
coast of Asia Minor, and were in sight of an 
island immortalized by Virgil. At this moment 
Mowbray appeared with the quotation on his 
lips, " Est in conspectu Tenedos ? " "I knew 
you would say so," murmured the soldier, " and 
am tempted to cap it with ' Pereant qui ante nos 
nostra dixerint.' " To Brackenbury the classical 
tag might well enough have suggested itself, for 
he had gone to Eton in the same year as the 
Duke of Newcastle, and stayed there with him 
most of his time ; and the Latin and Greek 
phrases easily assimilated by a public school boy 
seldom take leave of him altogether. But much of 
Wolseley's education had been picked up casually, 

142 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

first from a Dublin day-school, then from home 
tutors, especially the talk of his intelligent elders . 
His rare intellectual faculties showed themselves 
in no way more strikingly than in his complete 
triumph over his early educational deficiencies. 
No one of his time, military or civilian, combined 
with varied and accurate general culture so many 
traces of having been through the regulation 
classical mill. My friend St. Leger Herbert, a 
scholar of his college at Oxford, who at different 
times, abroad and at home, had lived much with 
and worked much for " our only General," ex- 
plained this by telling me^ from his own experi- 
ence, that after passing school and college age 
Wolseley had again disciplined himself in the 
old curriculum on his own account. " All 
soldiers," he once said to me, " worth anything, 
from Aristotle's pupil, Alexander, to the Duke 
of Wellington, have been systematic students, 
grinding their intellect on science or language, 
according to their taste." 

His quick, alert nature, overflowing with 
vitality, showed itself equally in the close per- 
ception of all that went on about him, and his 
conversation upon it or suggested by it. One 
could not be much in his company without feel- 
ing that his buoyant disposition explained the 
apparent ease of his triumph over the difficulties 

143 



Great Victorians 

in his professional path. He set out with an 
exact knowledge of what he intended to do, and 
never lost sight of the goal, which he doubted 
not his lifetime would enable him to reach. The 
Army, as he knew it on entering it, struck 
him as largely an eighteenth -century organiza- 
tion. Its ceremonial routine, reviews, inspec- 
tions, manoeuvres, took up time and exhausted 
energies which ought to be expended on master- 
ing the military developments and the strategical 
progress of our own times elsewhere than in 
England. Here came in the value of his associa- 
tion with Brackenbury^ who now, almost half a 
century ago, in Frasefs Magazine, then edited 
by Froude, wrote a series of articles on military 
reform, the first appearing in August 1867. 
These essays formed the earliest statement of the 
Wolseleyan programme. The chief points in- 
sisted on were the mischief to the public service 
of the dual control by the Secretary of State and 
the Commander-in-Chief and the appointment of 
a Chief of the Staff. Twenty-one years later 
Brackenbury, as a member of the Hartington 
Commission on Naval and Military Administra- 
tion, repeated these recommendations. Nine 
years before Wolseley's death ( 1 9 1 3 ), and 
shortly before Brackenbury's retirement from the 

active list, the office of Commander-in-Chief 

144 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

ceased to exist, and a Chief of the General Staff 
was called into being. In his " scorn of luxurious 
days " and the severity of the self -education which 
only ended with his life, the Duke of Wellington 
should be considered a scientific soldier. With 
him came into being the personal forces clearing 
the way for the professional soldier of our own 
time, all of whose heart and mind is in his work. 
By such agencies, too, were removed the last 
obstacles to Lord Haldane's completion of Wol= 
seley's reforms. That General's ideal was "a 
fighting force which should be ready to gio any- 
where and do anything." Those were Wolseley's 
words, addressed in my presence during one of 
his frequent Strathfieldsaye visits to the second 
Duke of Wellington, who gravely remarked, " His 
Grace would have agreed with you exactly. My 
father," he added, " suffered much from factious 
political opponents at home while fighting night 
and day for his country abroad. You have been, 
no doubt, prepared for all the interference with 
you by the whole pack of Secretaries of State, 
Surveyors -General, and the rest of them." 

From Wellington to Kitchener, the continuity 
of the military succession has been without a 
break, for the present Secretary of State for War, 
if not Wolseley's officer, was when a Woolwich 

cadet one of Brackenbury's pupils. 

145 K 



Great Victorians 

'He certainly impressed the greatest of con- 
tinental judges with a unique combination of 
gifts. When passing through Berlin during the 
seventies he was the one British officer whom 
Bismarck wished to see. That statesman's 
estimate was given some years later in terms of 
emphatic compliment to Sir Charles Dilke. Since 
Lord Wolseley's time the evolution of the twen- 
tieth-century soldier has passed through fresh 
stages under new auspices. Lord Kitchener 
never had a place in the Wolseley school, and is 
not less of an original product than was Wolseley 
himself. At Mr. Pandeh Ralli's Surrey country 
house, " Cranbrook," where Kitchener used to 
be a frequent guest, the conversation turned on 
the great masters of modern warfare. The future 
Secretary of State for War had then first become 
generally known for his Egyptian achievements. 
" Pray tell me, Colonel Kitchener, who helped 
you to become a warrior of such renown? " " I 
can," he replied, " only say with Topsy in ' Uncle 
Tom's Cabin,' ' 'Spects I growed.' " 

Even that strong and invaluable growth might 
not have produced services so immense to his 
country as well as to the whole profession of 
arms had not the atmosphere of his youth been 
suffused with Wolseleyism. Tel-el-Kebir came 
sixteen years before Khartoum. 

146 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

Some time during the seventies I called at 
Limmer's Hotel, Conduit Street, on a military 
friend of my school and college days, frequently 
mentioned in the dispatches for gallant conduct 
abroad and justly passing for a capable and 
smart officer at home. It was still the forenoon, 
and I suggested a stroll in the Park. " Impos- 
sible," he said from between the sheets, for he 
was still in bed. " I have nothing to wear. The 
fact," he continued, "is, I have had no occasion 
for day clothes for a long time, because I don't 
usually get up till it is time to dress for dinner. 
When I looked for my morning suit some days 
since, I found my servant had put it away as 
too shabby to wear. I have ordered things in 
its place, but they have not come home yet." 

In those days many of Captain Rawdon 
Crawley's descendants still flourished ; and, out- 
side hospitals, Albert Smith's " gent " was a 
by no means extinct type. Among wearers of 
uniforms it had not gone out when the " Wolseley 
gang" began to come in. It vanished as soon 
as that blend of intellectual and professional in- 
fluence began to leaven the whole martial polity. 
Cremome Gardens, finally closed in 1877, were 
still open, but the Wolseley epoch had no sooner 
fairly begun than dwellers in the adjacent streets 
distant not more than a hundred yards from the 

147 



Great Victorians 

place ceased to have their slumbers broken by 
the noise outside of altercations with the cabmen : 
" Wot, Capting, h'only arf a sov. for you and your 
lydy [in pink satin], all the way from Cre- 
morne ! " while some other Spring Captain, 
sallying forth on a night's pleasure, as he made 
for Piccadilly, took the preliminary precaution 
of entrusting his gold watch and chain to the first 
policeman he met with. " Bring it round to 
Long's to-morrow." Such incidents as those just 
related were common enough in mid-Victorian 
days. They became part of that ancient history 
which never repeats itself, once a Roberts and a 
Wolseley established the tradition of the simple, 
strenuous life for Lord Kitchener to em.phasize 
as well as by precept and practice to enforce. 

The soul of generosity to all those about him, 
Wolseley proclaimed more than once, before any 
one hinted at them in print, the obligations of 
himself and the methods for which he stood to 
Brackenbury and his associates. It was in 1882 
that Wolseley broke the power of Arabi Pasha. 
The earlier acts in this drama of thie near East 
had included Sir Beauchamp Seymour's naval 
demonstration at Dulcigno, followed by the 
Montenegrin frontier commission. The British 
representatives on that body iiacluded the pick 
of Brackenbury 's Woolwich class-room. Sir 

148 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

John Ardagh's and Sir Edward Law's deaths 
have left Sir Vincent Caillard the one survivor 
of the officers trained by Wolseley's ablest 
deputy. To those names, however, should 
ibe ', added the Duke of Connaught. Queen 
Victoria's youngest son not only had been 
one of Brackenbury's pupils at the Academy, 
but when quartered at Dover ;n the Rifle Brigade 
had requested his old teacher to deliver a course 
of lectures on military history at the Lord Warden 
Hotel. Much gratified at the account she heard 
of all this. Queen Victoria, as " a soldier's 
daughter," not only sent her thanks to the 
lecturer, but some years later showed the im- 
pression it had made upon her by referring in 
conversation with Wolseley to the pleasure she 
had received from his brilliant follower's pro- 
fessional services to her son. 

Many years ago I happened to be at Berlin in 
the company of Allan Thorn dike Rice, then 
editor and owner of the North American Review. 
The object of this visit was to get an article fromi 
Von Moltke, and he brought back to our hotel a 
story of his interview with the great Prussian 
strategist and a certain oracular and rather 
obscure utterance he delivered. Rice had made 
some pleasant remarks on the great qualities of 
the Prussian soldier in the then almost recent war 

149 



Great Victorians 

with France. " I can accept," said the Field- 
Marshal, " your compliment on our troops in the 
hour of victory, but cannot answer for their 
deserving it in the day of defeat." Whether this 
meant that a serious German reverse was un- 
thinkable, or that the soldiers of the Fatherland 
might prove morally unequal to the strain of 
reverses and checks, was a point which the editor 
thought Von Moltke purposely left doubtful. 
Perhaps, however, it was only the great man's 
way of turning the conversation. 

Allan Thorndike Rice will be remembered as a 
very highly Anglicized specimen of the literary 
American. The transition, therefore, was natural 
from the generalship in the war between North 
and South to the English military leaders of the 
time. In France, Lady Wolseley shared with 
Madame Gallifet the reputation of being the best- 
dressed woman in Europe ; and Lord Wolseley 
ranked high in the opinion, not only of General 
Gallifet himself, but of all French critics of the 
time. " From the men about Von Moltke," said 
Rice,: as he completed the account of his interview, 
" I found the German estimate was the same. 
Wolseley, they all admitted, has mastered the 
secret of success." That was the truth which 
won for "our only General" the well -placed 
confidence, not only of successive Cabinets, but 

150 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

of the entire nation, in a degree unapproached by 
any great captain since Wellington. He had 
invented and perfected an effective fighting 
machine, on every wheel, spring, and check of 
which he could rely for producing a desired and 
circumspectly planned result. The careers and 
achievements, not of Brackenbury alone, but of 
half a dozen others, attest the care, skill, and 
instinct for character with which he chose his 
instruments and which placed him in his day 
beyond the reach of rivalry. 

One quality was conspicuously shared by 
Wolseley with other great men, and perhaps the 
greatest men of all times. By the night of 
September 12, 1882, Wolseley had arranged the 
attack on Arabi Pasha. Before it began, the 
General, taking out his watch, said, " We have 
exactly ten minutes to spare. If I am not awake 
then, call me." That did not prove necessary. 
At the appointed time to the minute Wolseley was 
on his feet, ready to open the conflict which, con- 
tinuing through the hours of darkness, ended by 
the forenoon of the next day with the victory that 
made the English the overlords of the land of 
the Pharaohs. Among statesmen the same gift 
of slumber descended both to Gladstone and 
Disraeli from Pitt. On a certain night in the 
early summer of 1797, news of the Mutiny at 

151 



Great Victorians 

the Nore was personally brought to the Prime 
Minister in bed at Downing Street by Lord 
Spencer, then head of the Admiralty. Pitt 
listened attentively and resumed his night's rest 
when his colleague had left. As Spencer was 
leaving the house he thought of something which 
should be added to what he had already said. 
He ran upstairs again, only to find the statesman 
buried in profound repose. General Alava, 
Spanish Minister in London, and the Duke of 
Wellington's friend and former companion-in- 
arms, was surprised, the evening before the 
battle of Orthes," by one of his officers in much 
agitation coming to him with the words, " I don't 
know what will happen to us. 'Here is Wellington 
doing nothing but flirt with Madame Quintana." 
" I am glad to hear it," was the reply ; " for it 
shows that, as we are on the eve of a great fight, 
all his arrangements are made." One exact 
Wellingtonian parallel to Wolseley just before 
his great victory may be given. In the August 
of 1813 the Duke, on reaching St. Sebastian, 

^ *' It was here that the Duke received one of the few wounds 
or bruises which were his lot, but," said Mr. Gleig, who told me, 
"he was up on his feet in a moment and joking with Alava, 
slightly injured at the same time." From Alava, too, Hayward, 
as he told me, heard that Cambronne, on being captured by 
General Halkett, never said, " La garde meurt, et ne se rend pas," 
but only cried out for a surgeon to dress his wounds. 

152 



From Wellington to Wolseley 

heard that breaching batteries would not open for 
two hours. " Then^" said Wellington to his aide- 
de-camp (the future Lord Westmorland), " the 
best thing we can do, Burghersh, is to go to 
sleep." Suiting the action to the word, and 
slipping off his horse, he supported his back 
against one side of a trench and was snoring in 
a moment. " Without this power of sleep at 
will," said General Alava to Hayward, " there can 
be no great commander nor man in any line ; 
for mind and body alike would give way under 
exceptional stress." The famous officer now 
filling Wolseley's place in the nation's life has 
other personal tastes beyond that for hard work 
in common with his prototype. Lord Kitchener 
prefers gold or silver tea-services as gifts from 
a grateful country to " swords of honour," and is 
a thoroughly trained connoisseur in all which 
concerns the works composed of precious metals 
and stones. Lord Wolseley knew enough of 
paintings and statuary for a professional art 
critic, and had as skilled an eye for old crockery 
and china as Mr. Gladstone himself. 



153 



CHAPTER III 

AMBASSADORS AT CONSTANTINOPLE 

School examining at Tunbridge Wells — The young ladies playing 
croquet — The gentleman on the garden bench — The great 
" Eltchi " as seen in the lobby of the House — Debate 
on the Quadruple Alliance — His only speech, as he said, in 
the House — Crimean War caused, not by blundering and 
ignorant miscalculation, but by the great ideas and passions 
long in the air — Russia as the tyrant of national liberty 
under Nicholas I — " A cat whom no one cares to bell " — 
Stratford Canning's rise and progress — Diplomacy no longer 
a close borough — George Canning's cousin and precis-writer, 
but no friends at Court — A son of the commercial classes — 
At Eton, not as an oppidan but a "tug" — Roughing it in 
the " Long Chamber " — Captain of the school — Gets King's, 
makes many famous friends, but owes more to home lessons 
than to any of these — Not a persona grata to the Czar, but 
Sultan against Sultan at Constantinople — The terror of the 
Turk and of his own attaches — Granville Murray rebels — 
Caricatures his chief in Sir Hector Stubble — The great 
" Eltchi " returns to London — Is the diplomatic oracle of 
Parliament— Retires to Tunbridge Wells — Intellectual and 
busy to the last — Place in social and political nineteenth- 
century development — The great " Eltchi's " great pre- 
decessor, and those who have since tilled his place at 
Constantinople — Sir William White and others. 

At the end of the sixties I was much occupded 
with educational work, and did, amongst other 

154 



Ambassadors at ConstantinoDle 






things, a good deal of school examining. An 
errand of that sort took me to Tunbiridge 
Wells, where I had never been before. I knew 
nothing except the address of the pupils or 
teachers to whom I had been summoned, but 
the cnbman who drove me from the station 
to the place seemed familiar with it, and 
in a few minutes had set me down at the 
door, approached by a little gravel drive through 

a shrubbery of evergreens. Miss , said 

the servant, who had opened to me, was then 
busy with a new governess who had just 
come, but would be with me directly if I 
would be seated in the drawing-room or, if 
I preferred it, in the garden. I chose the 
latter as the day was fine, and unexpectedly 
found myself within a few seconds encircled 
by a group of young ladies between the ages 
of eight and eighteen, who obligingly offered 
to get mfe a chair, unless I would join them 
in a game of croquet. The seat not making 
its appearance as soon as I had supposed, I 
established myself on a garden bench already 
occupied by an old gentleman of attenuated 
figure but generally commanding presence, 
and with what may be called the remains of 
a penetrating and imperious expression of face, 
which a generation earlier had overawed the 

155 



Great Victorians 

Tui^kish Sultan and his ministers ; for, as I 
presently found out, he was none other than 
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, our Ambassador 
at the Porte from 1842 to 1858. He wel- 
comed me most politely, then praised the house 
and its mistress, adding, " You look rather 
young, sir, to have a daughter of school age." 
In a moment the alarming truth flashed upon 
me. " The Laurels," whither as examiner I 
had come, was an establishment for young 
ladies. And now I saw my hostess bearing 
down upon me. " Ah ! " she said naively, 
" I see you have made friends with his lord- 
ship already." " Yes," said the gentleman, 
once more addressing me directly, " I am a 
neighbour of this excellent lady ; I like young 
people, and she lets me come here sometimes 
to see her ch,arges at their play. Your 
name," he said to me presently, " has a West 
of England sound, and I am glad to hear it, 
for I am myself a Somersetshire man by descent." 
It was none other than the then sole survivor of 
the famous men connected with the Crimean War. 
And of all unlikely places for seeing the great 
" Eltchi," quite the unlikeliest would have 
seemed a girls' playground in a home county. 
The mention of Bristol called up Bridgwater, 
then, as always, a corrupt but not disfranchised 

156 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

borough with " Eothen " Kinglake for its mem- 
ber, whose account in his " Invasion of the 
Crimea " of our fierce -tempered Ambassador at 
the Porte might have prepared one for a much 
more alarming personage than I had encountered 
so unexpectedly in the grounds of a maiden 
lady at Frant. 

A remark that I had been known tO' Kinglake 
all my life, and that I had recently seen him 
when visiting the House of Commons, seemed to 
prepare him for a little interest in myself. " My 
House of Commons days," he said, " are now 
some five-and-twenty years behind me, and for 
some time I have been a stranger even to the 
House in which I now have a seat." Elsewhere, 
however, in the Parliamentary precincts his figure 
was familiar enough ; and one of the sights for 
which lobby visitors specially looked was the 
little grey-headed, pale-faced old gentleman 
who from 1841 to 1857 had made the great Turk 
tremble in his capital, and secured his own recog- 
nition by the rest of the world as master of the 
Sultan . 

A tolerable memory of incidents at St. 
Stephen's served me now in my conversation with 
the great "Eltchi." I had heard of his speech 
in the Commons two years after his entering it 
for Lynn. The debate had been on the Quad- 

157 



Great Victorians 

ruple Alliance, formed by England, France, 
Portugal, and Spain, for clearing the Peninsula 
of the two Pretenders, Don Carlos and Don 
Miguel. Sir Stratford Canning, to speak of him 
by his then style, had opened the discussion with 
an explanation of Palmerston's policy directed to 
that end. Of the other speakers, the best known, 
so far as I could remember, was Lord Leveson, 
the future second Earl of Granville. It was a 
very attenuated reminiscence, but it seemed to 
please the great man ; " And I think," he said, 
" you have recalled about the only speech I made 
in the House." At last he approached the subject 
of the Crimean War. " You have no doubt," he 
said, " heard the story of Lord Bath's discovery 
that it was my way of revenging myself on the 
Czar Nicholas for his objection to my being 
English Ambassador at St. Petersburg. But 
when two great nations, as was then the case, 
urge their Governments to take up the sword, 
one must look beyond individuals to the impelling 
cause and to something else than the blunders of 
ignorance or miscalculation, the vindictiveness of 
an individual like myself or the wiles of the 
remarkable man then at the head of the restored 
French Empire. Chatham in the eighteenth 
century could speak of ' becoming more and more 
Russ every day,' and in comparison with the 

158 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

Germans, the Duke of Wellington's experience of 
the Czar and his agents was that of dealing with 
saints." 

But from the year 1 8 1 5 Russia had studiously- 
stood outside the European polity. Ten years 
later Nicholas I ascended the throne. Under him 
Russia entered upon a course presaging, not only 
in its general outline but in many of its details, the 
pretensions and the savagery that a century later 
were to make the Hohenzollerns the bullies of 
the Continent and in a struggle for bare existence 
unite the rest of the Western world against them. 
" During the first half of this century," said Lord 
Stratford, " Russia stood forth as the tyrant, not 
only of Turkey, Hungary, or Poland, but of 
national liberty wherever it could be found. In 
the next century, when I am gone, you may see 
Russia herself making common cause with others 
against a neighbour denying to her and the rest 
of the world the right to breathe save on con- 
ditions which that neighbour lays down." 

The old diplomatist abstained, of course, from 
any direct reference to his part in the great drama 
except, perhaps, when he said that the Czar 
always believed in the impossibility of England 
taking up arms against him while Lord Aberdeen 
and his colleagues held office. This was to over- 
look the fact that Lord Stratford at Constanti- 

159 



Great Victorians 

nople rather than the Prime Minister in Downing 
Street decided and regulated British action. At 
the Porte, Lord Stratford managed the Turks in 
their own way ; it was really one Sultan against 
another Sultan. Lord Granville, writing to the 
Duke of Argyll, put the facts truly as well as 
effectively : " We have as Ambassador at Con- 
stantinople a cat whom no one cares to bell." 

In 1852 the great " Eltchi " had jumped at 
the idea of being Lord Derby's Secretary of 
State at the Foreign Office. The whole Corps 
diplomatique of London were affrighted by what 
they called " a bad joke." The suggestion, of 
course, fell through. The Crimean War had 
come to an end two years when Lord Stratford 
de Redcliffe, both visiting London and staying at 
many country houses, had the opportunity of 
criticizing some of his own critics, among them 
Persigny, from 1855 to i860 French Ambas- 
sador in London. " That diplomatist," said Lord 
Stratford, " had nothing in him, no suite in con- 
versation, no tact." What had offended Lord 
Stratford chiefly had been Persigny's remark to 
him : " Milord, on me dit que vous ^tes deux per- 
sonnes — dans la conversation, rien de plus char- 
mant ; mais touchez aux affaires, et voila le lion 
Britannique." As he told this story the great 
" Eltchi " straightened his neck, opened his eyes, 

1 60 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

dosed his lips, as if he felt himself the British 
lion, and as if he had had his whiskers pulled. 
The great " Eltchi's " indignation over this 
little incident was nothing in comparison with the 
display of wrath provoked by a little gentleman 
with curly hair just turning grey, dark com- 
plexion, vivacious manner, and glib tongue, 
known during the late seventies at the crack Paris 
restaurants as the " Little Dook," from having 
for his father the most magnificent specimen of 
the highest order of British nobility. This was 
Granville Murray, the Duke of Buckingham's 
reputed son, and, as that son contended, lawful 
heir. His noble father had opened to him, 
not only the door of the Foreign Office, but of 
the Morning Post. Going as attache to Lord 
Westmorland's embassy at Vienna, Murray 
doubled the part of sucking diplomatist and news- 
paper correspondent. The Ambassador showed 
his disapproval of this arrangement by getting 
the young man " moved on " to Constantinople. 
There Sir Stratford Canning showed a suspicion 
of the new attache from the first ; objecting to 
his journalistic connection, he made him Vice- 
Consul at Mitylene. Murray then took his 
revenge upon the author of his exile by carica- 
turing him as Sir Hector Stubble in " The 
Roving Englishman," a series of Household 

i6i L 



Great Victorians 

V^ords articles.! The home authorities next pro- 
ceeded to shelve Murray by making him Consul- 
General at Odessa. Here he constantly employed 
himself with attempting to blackmail English 
merchants. Lord Derby, then Foreign Secretary, 
being appealed to, gave judgment against Murray^ 
who divided the rest of his days between London 
and Paris. 

Though he had not spared his too literary 
attache for the escapades just mentioned. Sir 
Stratford himself was no fanatical votary of red- 
tapeism. He fancied that he had something of 
a grievance because he had not been given the 
Paris Embassy in 1852. Lord Granville, then 
Foreign Secretary, pleaded the insuperable diffi- 
culties of social or political etiquette. Sir Strat- 
ford apparently acquiesced, and assured the 
minister that the little disappointment should not 
interrupt their friendship or stand in the way 
of his writing on foreign questions to Lord Gran- 
ville himself with the same freedom as, in earlier 
days, he had written to his father while repre- 
sentative of England in the French capital. Sir 

^ The usual Foreign Office bag from London, reaching Sir 
Stratford at the Constantinople Embassy, was accompanied by 
a sack of papers. These proved to be copies of the magazine 
containing this composition ; for not only the writer, but all his 
own kind friends, determined that he should not miss it, had 
sent it to the Ambassador. 

162 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

Stratford, however, did not readily or for a long 
time completely get over his soreness in the 
matter. He even gave that feeling an occa- 
sional expression in words which showed him to 
have inherited some share of his famous cousin's 
rhetorical acidity shown during the debate on 
the Indemnity Bill of 1 8 1 8 in his reference to 
" the revered and ruptured Ogden." The velvet- 
covered claw might at least have been seen in 
Sir Stratford's description of Granville as not only 
a P^oreign Office sphinx but a Foreign Office 
sponge, absorbing every drop of intelligence but 
giving none in return. This was in the same 
eminently Canningian vein as Stratford's earlier 
description of Talleyrand as a rapid stream, 
frozen over smoothly and transparently enough to 
show the current without discovering the bottom. 
Recalling these and other experiences. Lord 
Stratford, as for some fifteen years he had been 
when I saw him, let it be seen that he believed 
a good deal less in the collective wisdom of the 
Foreign Office than in the fitness for his work of 
the Ambassador. If at every turn of affairs he 
has to wait for instructions from home he but 
degenerates into a Downing Street under-strapper 
in a gold-laced coat at the end of a telegraph 
wire. " Some Foreign Office training," he held, 
" may be in most cases desirable, but for 

163 



Great Victorians 

diplomacy the great thing is to get the best men 
to be had, and not to look for them only within 
official limits. That method formed the foun- 
dation of Austrian diplomacy in its palmiest 
eighteenth -century period. Maria Theresa found 
a successor to Kaunitz, not in the official ring but 
in a poor Danube boatman's son, Thugut. The 
same kind of thing repeatedly happened with us 
during the eighteenth century, when the Univer- 
sities were asked by the Secretary of State to 
recommend from time to time such of their 
students as Nature might seem to have shaped for 
an international career. i In a way not unlike 
this I was brought out myself. My father had 
given a home to my cousin George and looked 
well after him at Eton. 'He requited this kindness 
by his interest from the first in me. fie himself 
took me to Eton at the age of nine, and at 
Eton I belonged, not to the wealthy and aris- 
tocratic oppidans, but as a colleger roughed it 
with the poorest and humblest in that terrible 
* Long Chamber.' My forefathers in the Middle 
Ages had prospered as Bristol traders. After- 
wards they established themselves in London. 
My father did well there, but none of the family, 

^ So Gilbert West, the friend and contemporary of Chatham, 
who translated " Pindar " and wrote on the Resurrection, had 
been offered, in his Christ Church days, at the Dean's instance 
but had refused, a place in the Foreign Office. 

164 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

like so many of their merchant contemporaries,^ 
ever founded a political house or acquired, as 
was done at a later day by the Whitbreads and 
others, political connection and influence. 
Captain of the school in 1806, I naturally got 
King's, and brought with me to Cambridge, I 
am pleased to think, as many signs of school 
popularity and esteem, in the shape of ' leaving 
books,' as any one of my time. 

" My whole Universit}^ life," he went on, " con- 
sisted of only two terms, the one thing about it 
worth mention perhaps being that my rooms, 
which were in the oldest part of the building, 
had been those of a famous and much earlier 
King's scholar. Sir Robert Walpole." "These 
rooms," Lord Stratford told the present writer, 
" were kept aired and in order for me, after 
my cousin had helped me to the beginning 
of my professional life ; for from time to time 

' The London traders who have founded or re-created noble 
houses included in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the 
ancestor of the Aveland peers, Sir Gilbert Heathcote ; Sir Samuel 
Dashwood, Lord Brooke's progenitor ; Sir Thomas Cooke, the 
draper and Lord Mayor, who prepared the way for the Verulam 
peerage ; Sir John Gresham, grocer, to whose posterity a Duke 
of Buckingham belonged ; and Sir John Houblon, grocer, whose 
descendants numbered the first Viscount Palmerston. Descend- 
ing to our own times, not only commercial success but first-class 
political influence associates itself with the names of Whitbread, 
Rathbone, and Chamberlain. 

165 



Great Victorians 

I combined short spells of college residence with 
my precis -writership at the Foreign Office ; I 
had even looked forward to revisiting King's 
after going to Copenhagen as second secretary. 
At Cambridge the best -known men of my time 
included Lonsdale, Bishop of Lichfield ; Blom- 
field, Bishop of London ; Pollock, Chief Baron of 
the Exchequer ; Lord Palmerston ; Ellenborough, 
Governor -General of India. I had also occa- 
sional glimpses of celebrities belonging to an 
earlier generation than my own. Such were the 
Grecian Porson, a thin, middle-sized figure with 
lank hair, pale cheeks, and a book parentally 
hugged under his arms, as well as, in the Evan- 
gelical pulpit, Charles Simeon, so seated as to 
be invisible till he rose to preach, his fingers 
flattened against each other and pointing up- 
wards, his countenance as it came slowly into 
view noticeable for the turned -up eyes and a 
smile of sweet, complacent piety." 

The moulding force of his character would be 
looked for in vain among the famous figures on 
the Cam ; it would be rather found, to quote his 
own words, in his mother. " It was good," she 
told her son, " of your cousin George to give 
you a place in his office, but your admiration of 
his talents and virtues must not make you blind 
to his faults— want of charity, sometimes even 

1 66 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

justice, towards his adversaries, and a bitter- 
ness of speech that aUenates friends and makes 
enemies. Considering all your father did for 
George at Eton and afterwards, his goodness to 
you is natural, right, and creditable to him. And 
remember that his sharp tongue went together 
with a generous heart, and how he showed this 
when, while at the Board of Control, he lent poor 
Mr. Sheridan, whom, by the by, he did not like, 
£200, without any acknowledgment. The per- 
formance of your duty to Heaven first, towards 
all your fellow -creatures in your various relation- 
ships to them, and especially to those you dis- 
like," was the sum of the advice given to her 
son by the fond mother, who not once, but re- 
peatedly, whenever she saw occasion, impressed 
on him the " paramount need of consideration for 
others, as shown in the one perfect Life, and 
the help in the formation of character to be 
derived from Blair's most excellent discourse on 
candour and rancour. This teaches us to 
mitigate our censures of one who was at 
least a humane, forbearing, benevolent spirit, 
and so likely to have found more mercy 
from his Creator than from his fellows." 
For the rest, let her son above all things 
and in all circumstances observe the Sabbath 
day, cultivate the virtues of order and regularity, 

167 



Great Victorians 

and so lay the foundations of moral, spiritual, 
intellectual, as well as physical comfort, health, 
and effective industry. 

The influence of his mother's wishes, training, 
and instruction had not exhausted itself in his 
latest years. He was nearer ninety than eighty 
when he produced his two longest and most 
serious compositions, "Why am I a Christian?" 
and "The Greatest of Miracles." As regards 
the former of these, the author, to quote his own 
words to me — words, as I thought, strongly im- 
bued with the Canningite spirit — had " noticed 
theological questions not only debated on plat- 
forms, discussed at dinner-tables, dogmatized in 
newspapers, but sometimes not a little compli- 
cated by members of Convocation. The subject 
of supreme importance, both temporal and 
spiritual, is, in fact, tossed about from mouth 
to mouth like the newest piece of gossip or 
scandal. It is not," he continued, "the Church 
or any special Communion that interests me, but 
the divinity of the Church's Founder. Hence 
my exposition of its superhuman origin in this 
little book, under sixteen heads. Who may have 
read it I do not know, but am glad that its design 
and execution were approved by experts so differ- 
ent from each other as Dean Stanley and Lord 
Shaftesbury. The former admired the success 

i68 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

with which the difficulties of arrangement had 
been overcome, and beheved that the Church as 
well as the world might be better for seeing 
so firm a faith combined with so large and deep 
an insight into the great truths which all Christ- 
ians hold, or ought to hold, alike. Lord Shaftes- 
bury welcomied the ' dear and long-known 
friend's ' clear, stout handwriting in the letter 
about his book as a proof that ' somehow or other 
the love of Christ keeps people very young and 
fresh, however old they may be.' " 

The width and variety of Lord Stratford's intel- 
lectual interests in his very latest years now 
received pToof as conclusive as it was surprising 
to the person in conversation with him. The 
Temple Bar Magazine had lately contained some 
pretty verses by Mortimer Collins, ending with 
the lines : — 

Whom the gods love die young — for this reason 
They cannot grow old. 

The classical thought in the modern setting had 

caught Lord Stratford's eye and interested him 

in the poet, whose name he had not heard before. 

" Tell me now," he said, " something about the 

man who can write such a musical lyric as this." 

After theology and religion the revival of his 

early turn for classical scholarship and poetry 

169 



Great Victorians 

brightened and gladdened his Kentish retirement. 
" Nearly seventy years ago," he explained, "Mr. 
Murray published my little poem, ' Bonaparte,' 
in which my severest critic, my cousin George, 
discovered some beautiful lines, though he did 
not altogether like its tone. Lord Byron was 
more unreservedly complimentary. The author 
of ' Childe Harold ' had himself written an ode 
on the same subject in the same year. ' Can- 
ning's,' he said, ' is infinitely better than mine, 
and certainly the best thing he has ever written. 
I always knew him for a man of talent, but did 
not suspect him of possessing all the family gifts 
in such perfection.' " 

Lord Stratford throughout his whole ambas- 
sadorial term' had always kept up his house in 
Grosvenor Square. Thither, therefore, he first 
went when, in 1858, he finally re-settled in his 
native land. His attachment, from domestic 
associations, to Tunbridge Wells made him a 
constant visitor to its neighbourhood, and caused 
him to buy, in one of its pleasantest spots, the 
dwelling which eventually developed itself into 
Frant Court. Till late in the seventies his pen 
was constantly busy in The Times, and his 
speeches were heard at short intervals in Par- 
liament whenever some fresh phase of the Eastern 
question asserted itself, or some special topic, 

170 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

appealing strongly to his deepest convictions, 
emerged from the welter of talk about Anglo - 
Turkish and Russian relationshipis . Such, in par- 
ticular, was the Porte's treatment of Christian 
missionaries. "Apart from this," he told both 
Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone, " he did 
not despair of finding a barrier against Russian 
aggression in a belt of Christian States under 
the Sultan's suzerainty. If that could be done 
the material would be ready to hand for forming 
a Christian Empire administered by Eastern 
Christians." His hopes were never realized. 
The extravagances and barbarities of Abd-ul- 
Aziz and the failure of the European Powers to 
enforce their periodically prescribed reforms im- 
posed, as he thought, on England the duty of 
saving the Turks from themselves. 

These, however, are matters of history. They 
have been related at once with fullness, clearness, 
and succinctness by Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole in 
his excellent and exhaustive biography, of so 
much use to the present writer in confirming, 
checking, correcting, or enlarging his own im- 
pressions, originally received more than forty 
years ago . 

Aristocracies, it has been said, rich in force are 
wanting in the ideas to be found in democracies. 
Of neither polity does Stratford Canning stand 

171 



Great Victorians 

out as a representative. Belonging by birth to 
the most powerful and prosperous section of the 
middle class, by training, education, social inter- 
course, and tastes he personified the permeation 
of the order from which he rose with the patriot- 
ism, the consuming eagerness for national service 
of which, during his early days, Chatham and 
Chatham's greater son were looked back upon 
as the most perfect embodiments known to 
English history. 

Of all our chancelleries none has displayed so 
mtich of supreme excellence on the one hand, 
and of deplorable deficiency on the other, as 
the British Embassy at Constantinople. The 
eighteenth -century line of English ambassadors 
at the Porte was opened suitably to that patrician 
epoch by Edward Wortley Montagu, husband of 
the famous Lady Mary, who on betrothal had 
received from her future husband a copy of the 
Roman historian Quintus Curtius, instead of an 
engagement ring. In the Victorian age a real 
access of importance and power was first given 
to the same residence on the Golden Horn by the 
illustrious type of the middle-class growth to 
ascendancy now recalled. After that Whitehall 
accredited no representative of the first calibre 
to the Porte till Sir William White. He, as yet 

the only lineal descendant of the great " Eltchi," 

172 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

received an even more impressive sobriquet from 
the Turk, " the British bear," not from any surU- 
ness or even asperity of manner, but from his 
rare force of character, his refusal to be con- 
quered by obstacles, his ursine acuteness in scent- 
ing intrigue and foreseeing the possible conse- 
quence of remote diplomatic moves. 

My first acquaintance, shortly afterwards 
ripening into something like intimacy, with this 
remarkable man began in Paris at the late Dr. 
Alan Herbert's dinner-table, long before he rose 
to European fame. An internationa] exhibition 
was then in progress. Thither we all adjourned 
after dinner to pass what for some of us, certainly 
for me, was the pleasantest and most instructive 
evening yet ever known. The show in the 
Champs Elysees abounded in exhibits from 
obscure little countries known to most only by 
name. Sir William White found in them the 
opportunity for the most delightful and unpro- 
fessorial discourse concerning the fresh light 
thrown by them on our knowledge about the 
industrial and commercial future of the com- 
munities from which they came. 

Commencing as a consular clerk, he had made 
his mark by grasping the importance of apparent 
trifles. The best record of his progress to dis- 
tinction and power shows itself in the protocols 

173 



Great Victorians 

of the Constantinople Conference (1885). 
These, as kept by Gabriel Hanotaux, form the 
materials for a faithful portrait of White at work. 
Bulgarians, Roumanians, Servians, Montenegrins 
— Sir William White, the best type of the 
modern Ambassador the second half of the 
Victorian era had seen, knew them all, and was 
recognized by the whole Bulgarian people in 
1885 for their one trustworthy agent in unifica- 
tion. Hence on September i8th their deposition 
of the Turkish Governor -General and their pro- 
clamation of the Union which German machina- 
tions had prevented at the Berlin Congress of 
1878, even as the same influences proved equally 
hostile to it in the Bucharest Treaty of 1913. 

Just a generation has passed since, at the date 
now mentioned, Prussian intrigue brought about 
the Turkish occupation of Bulgarian provinces. 
Then came the Servian attack on Bulgaria, left 
bare for the moment, by a German trick, of its 
army. These troops, however, were at once re- 
called, reached Slivnitsa after a march of 
seventy -two hours, and under Prince Alexander 
of Battenberg hurled back King Milan to the 
place from which he had come . In so doing they 
astounded Europe, and caused no less an expert 
in matters of this sort than Sir Robert Morier, 
then our Ambassador at St. Petersburg, to con- 

174 



Ambassadors at Constantinople 

gratulate his Constantinople colleague, Sir 
William White, on the consummate piece of 
cosmic work which, supported at home by the 
Secretary of State, Lord Salisbury, he had seen 
carried through. Since Sir William White 
(1824-91) in the Near East, and Sir Julian 
Pauncefote on the other side of the Atlantic, the 
one really successful Ambassador we have had 
is Lord Bryce, a product of much the same 
academic training as Stratford Canning himself. 
In addition to his many other distinctions of the 
I sis, our late Ambassador to Washington won 
the Gaisford Greek verse prize by translating 
Tennyson's " May Queen " into Theocritean hexa- 
meters, such as no one would have admired more 
than Lord Stratford himself ; for while that com- 
position was being read in the Sheldonian, the 
great " Eltchi " in his Kentish retirement, in inter- 
vals of more serious work, was rendering nursery 
rhymes into Greek iambics, and finding parts of 
"Little Jack Horner" rather untranslatable. 



175 



CHAPTER IV 

PALMERSTONIANA 

The parliamentary contest at Tiverton — " Cupid " on the Tiver 
ton hustings — A bit of Butcher Rowcliffe's mind — "No 
chaff ! " — The accustomed irony of Socrates matched by the 
habitual banter of Palmerston — A visit to the Prime Minister 
in Downing Street — What he looked and said — Repeated 
constitutionals from the standing desk to the inkpot and 
writing-table — His narrative of the family history of the 
movements ending in putting down "hells" — Cosmos out of 
chaos on the writing-table — Lady Palmerston's invitation 
cards — The "basket trick" — "Next man in" — "Bless my 
soul, how very singular!" — "I hope you're better" — Man 
of that age sure to have been out of sorts — Palmerston and 
the Mornmg Post — George Smythe's prediction about the 
Tory Party — Too busy to read the papers — His Tory days — 
Disgrace at Court — Sir Henry Bulwer's coaching in foreign 
politics and its result — Palmerston with those about him in 
Paris and the pocket-handkerchief which won't fall out — 
"Big Ben's" two faces — "James" or "Palmerston"? — 
Palmerston as sketched by Disraeli in 1836 — His treatment 
of Talleyrand and its political consequence — The diplo- 
matist in the Cambridge House drawing-room — " How like 
his father ! " — Things one would rather not have said — The 
legendary bottle of brown sherry a day — The historical 
Amontillado — The hard names that break no bones but 
make enemies — "An absolute and Absolutist fool" — "The 
next thing to an idiot " — The elderly gallant in the boudoir 
— " I think it most gentlemanly " — The Schleswig-Holstein 
176 



Palmerstoniana 

question understood by three persons only — Lady Palmer- 
ston's smacking kiss in the lobby — Pam and the Duke — 
Pam on Queen Victoria and the Duchess of Kent — How 
foreign statesmen cooled their heels in Palmerston's waiting- 
room — What they thought and said of it — How to deal with 
Austrian outrages and to enforce English rights in Brazilian 
waters — The cost of a hatless walk on Brocket Terrace — The 
ruling passion strong in death — "That's article ninety-eight; 
now go on to the next." 

In the late spring or early summer of 1859 the 
present writer, then a small boy who had broken 
bounds, was one of a crowd gathered round a 
West Country hustings to witness an event much 
talked of in those years at the return of bur- 
gesses for the hilly little town looking down upon 
the confluence of the rivers Exe and Loman. 
That geographical fact expressed itself in the 
old name of the place, " Twy -ford-ton," corrupted 
into the modern Tiverton. Here, after his ejec- 
tion by South Hampshire in 1835, Palmerston 
had found the seat which he afterwards never 
lost. His re-elections always formed a feature in 
each successive appeal to the country, and were 
attended by the incidents my recollection of 
which is still fresh. It was in the thick of a 
parliamentary contest. Once before within the 
same twelvemonth the constituency had gone 
through the form of returning, with the Hon. 
G. Denman for colleague, the debonair septua- 

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Great Victorians 

genarian, who had not yet outgrown his early 
nickname of " Cupid," and who was now address- 
ing it. In a rather chilly air he stood, bare- 
headed and beaming, not far from the gateway of 
what had once been the castle of the Earls of 
Devon. The temper of the multitude showed 
no signs of preoccupation with serious politics. 
Men, women, and children, country gentlemen, 
clergymen, and loafers had met simply for 
amusement. The proceedings that they watched 
became almost a roaring farce, especially at the 
point of the appearance among them of a man 
in a blue smock with certain articles of cutlery 
dangling from his side. Such were the outward 
insignia of the very independent elector who, on 
these occasions, played the part of the " devil's 
advocate." This was the champion heckler, who 
made the name of Rowcliffe famous, and without 
whose contribution to it the fun of the fair on 
the West Country hustings would have been 
incomplete . 

The ludicrous episode was always opened by 
the Tiverton censor to something like the follow- 
ing effect : " The noble lord," said Rowcliffe, 
" may call himself a Liberal ; he is really the 
best representative the Conservatives could pos- 
sibly have. I hope, however, he will honestly 
answer my present queries." Palmerston smiled 

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Palmerstoniana 

assent and congratulated his old friend on the 
retention of his youthful vigour, and with it his 
prejudices. " I only regret," Palmerston added, 
" that it seems as if Mr. Rowcliffe and I were 
never destined to agree in our political faith . Am 
I for the ballot and manhood suffrage ? No, I 
am against both. How far, then, will I go with 
the suffrage? Well, I will be quite straightfor- 
ward with Mr. Rowcliffe, and at once say I will 
not tell him. After the confidence my con- 
stituents have reposed in me, I hold it my duty 
to act according to my judgment in all matters 
relating to Reform. I hope that the political 
difference between my friend and myself will not 
alter our private friendship. But the man who 
does agree with everybody is not worth having 
any one to agree with him." This formed the 
only specimen of the Palmerstonian banter which 
I ever had the opportunity of hearing. I could 
have heard no better specimen of the habitual 
persiflage of Palmerston than that on the Tiverton 
hustings just described, if I had regularly wit- 
nessed at Westminster his best -known perform- 
ances throughout the six years of his second and 
last premiership, 1859-65. The quick, firm 
step with which he entered the House I had seen 
in the lobby. The last of the years just named 
was the first of my London experiences and 

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Great Victorians 

brought me permission to present myself before 
the great man in Downing Street, just three 
months before he died. His movement was then 
brisk and elastic. After a few words of welcome 
he swung up to the desk at which he worked, to 
finish a few papers. As he paced from the 
desk to the table, " I believe," he said, standing 
up all the while, " in getting whatever exercise 
one can ; and one can do a mile in one's room as 
well as in the street." These words explained 
the arrangement by which the inkpot was placed 
on a table some three or four yards distant from 
the writing-desk at which he stood. Every fresh 
dip of the pen therefore involved one in a 
series of little pedestrian exercises, which collec- 
tively might have mounted up to quite a " con- 
stitutional." I had noticed outside his horse, with 
a groom at its head, waiting for him. When not 
walking, he rode. After the Duke of Wellington 
he was the last of political celebrities who for his 
progress through the West End streets preferred 
the saddle to the brougham, and, when on horse- 
back between Piccadilly and Whitehall, was 
cheered by the crowd within a fortnight or ten 
days of his death . 

" Get Lord Palmer st on if you can," I had been 
previously told by Mr. Baillie Cochrane, the 
Buckhurst of " Coningsby " and the Lord 

1 80 



Palmerstoniana 

Lamington of 1880, "to tell you how he came 
to form the committee which in 1846 put down 
all the public gaming-houses. You will find, I 
think, one of your relatives had a good deal to 
do with it." Lord Palmerston's mention of that 
relative soon gave me the opportunity of acting 
on the suggestion, " Your uncle," he said, " sat 
on the committee. He had, indeed, given me 
no rest till I consented to it. He was a member 
of Crockford's, and looked in there for play most 
nights in the week. No doubt he had seen many 
friends ruined by the club. But the places he 
was particularly concerned to put down were not 
of this sort. They were rather the low-class hells 
which abounded in the purlieus of Leicester 
Square and Covent Garden, amounting, I believe, 
to something like thirty or forty between Picca- 
dilly Circus and Long Acre. It seems," he con- 
tinued, " some relation of his, and therefore, I 
suppose, of yours, I think a cousin, while an 
Oxford undergraduate and up for the Boat Race, 
suddenly disappeared from the Opera House 
lobby, where he had been seeing a lady into 
her carriage while his friends went on before 
to Evans's supper -rooms. Neither here nor else- 
where did he join them, and was never, I believe, 
seen or heard of till several years later, when he 
startled his family by entering his father's 

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Great Victorians 

Oxfordshire rectory as if nothing had happened. 
Since he was there last he had been to South 
Africa, made some money, for the first time in 
his hfe, and got into the Cape Parhament. The 
explanation of his being suddenly lost to his 
friends was that on the night of his vanishing he 
had found himself nearly cleaned out. Believing 
in his luck, he made his way to one of the 
'hazard' dens in Cranborne Street. Here he 
staked some of the few coins still in his pocket, 
of course lost them, dared not show his head at 
home, took coach to Southampton, found a 
steamer starting for South Africa, took it, and, 
having eventually filled his purse, thought he 
would like to see once more how they fared at 
home." 

Lord Palmerston occupied the frequent inter- 
vals of this little narrative with occasionally ply- 
ing his pen, now at his standing desk, now at 
the table. The latter was in a state of extra- 
ordinary confusion, papers of all kinds piled high 
above one another. Diving into these, he ex- 
tricated a number of envelopes, into which he 
proceeded to put letters or cards, taken from one 
of his red boxes, and already prepared for send- 
ing off. These, I afterwards knew, were in- 
vitations for Lady Palmerston's famous " Satur- 
days," or, in one or two instances perhaps, for 

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Palmerstoniana 

some other hospitality at that Cambridge House 
where one of its master's severest French critics 
was constrained to admit, " On dine fort bien 
chez lui." 

The most characteristic feature in the apart- 
ment, where I thought I had rather overstayed 
my time, only struck me a minute or two before 
I rose to leave. It might, with literal truth, have 
been called the basket trick. By an agency of 
which I could see nothing, a basket of papers 
reached the minister's table. Directly it had done 
so the minister became deep in their contents and 
placed his lips to a speaking-tube, thus signify- 
ing, as I inferred, to an invisible attendant his 
readiness for another visitor. While passing 
through the door, I met a gentleman who evi- 
dently had an appointment with the great man. 
Had I been privileged to witness the interview, 
this is what I should have heard : " How very 
remarkable ! " would have been the Premier's 
greeting. " I was just thinking of your matter 
when you were announced ; I have, you see, got 
all the papers relating to it here. Your interests, 
therefore, are being well looked after, so that 
you may expect very shortly to hear from me 
again." This genuinely Palmerstonian farce was 
played probably more than once every day. Its 
" behind the scenes " prelude was the sighting 

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Great Victorians 

by a quick-eyed private secretary of a stranger 
outside bearing down on the ministerial resi- 
dence. The timely warning through the tube 
enabled the First Lord invisibly and inaudibly to 
order the necessary documents to be disinterred 
from their pigeon-hole. The other acts followed 
in the order just described. 

Except as a boy at the Tiverton hustings I 
never heard any of Lord Palmerston's speeches. 
In the lobby of the House, however, I saw him 
more than once, the picture of good-humoured and 
smiling composure, bestow a few friendly words 
alike on opponents and supporters. These were 
the verbal salutes that surprised and delighted 
their recipients by their interest in their welfare 
and their acquaintance with their personal or 
family concerns. To a gentleman advanci^gg in 
years would be addressed the inquiry whether 
he was better, " because," as the questioner ex- 
plained to a friend, " a man of that age is sure 
to have been recently out of sorts." 

Lord Palmerston's organ in the daily Press had 
always heen the Morning Post. On foreign 
politics he inspired its best articles, written as 
these were sometimes by his great journalistic 
ally, the late Algernon Borthwick (Lord Glenesk), 
even when editor himself, and now and then by 
the happily still extant Mr. T. G. Bowles, whose 

184 



Palmerstoniana 

chief writing, however, in the paper belonged to 
a later period. 

" Sharp work ! " was Palmerston's well-known 
comment on Napoleon's coup d'etat of Decem- 
ber 2, 1 8 5 I . So far, he explained, as the remark 
expressed approval of what had been done, it 
was made, not in his official capacity but as a 
private individual. The Second Empire forged 
a new link in his connection with the great organ 
of the fashionable world. Shortly before that 
event Algernon Borthwick had gone to Paris 
as resident representative of the newspaper 
managed by his father, the well-known Peter 
Borthwick. I The Post in modern times was 
always High Tory and High Church. Notwith- 
standing its Palmerstonian associations, it dis- 
approved of the Palmerstonian bishops as 
strongly as did Samuel Wilberforce or George 
Anthony Denison. It was entirely at one with 
Palmerston in approving the establishment of 
the Second Empire. Out of that agreement grew 
its understanding, on European affairs only, with 
Palmerston, who showed his regard for its editor 
by giving him exclusive news and whatever 
advice he might find useful. Palmerston had a 
personal friend in George Smythe, the reputed 
original of " Coningsby." Smythe occasionally 

^ Conservative M.P. for Evesham, 1835-41. 
185 



Great Victorians 

wrote paragraphs for the Post, and in one of 
them embodied the Palmerstonian sentiment that 
the Tory Party would not exist in six months. 
Lord Glenesk, who knew DisraeU as well as he 
did Palmerston, himself told me that the author of 
" Coningsby " considered something of its imme- 
diate success due to Palmerston's admiration for 
it, expressed wherever he went.^ On January 
30, 1856, the Morning Post published in its 
largest type an article on American affairs that 
struck the chief supporters of the newspaper, 
Lord Clarendon and others, as most mischievous. 
Lord Clarendon, therefore, as Foreign Secretary, 
complained to his chief. The Prime Minister 
" Ha-ha'd ! " in reply, " I have been too busy 
lately to read the papers." This was the kind of 
repartee practised by him in season and out of 
season upon the most different occasions, but 
always with the happiest results. 

Before another illustration is given, these im- 
pressions may be placed in clearer perspective by 
recalling one or two biographical details suffi- 
ciently accessible no doubt, but sometimes for- 

' Palmerston and Disraeli had been personal friends from the 
time that the former was first heard of. Their oratorical duels on 
the floor of the House were purely stage play. Mr. William 
Longman, of Paternoster Row, told me that Palmerston had 
spoken of " Coningsby " to him as fiirst-rate in every respect, 
especially its characters, which were perfect portraits. 

186 



Palmerstoniana 

gotten, and in a single instance, now to be men- 
tioned, perhaps unknown. The most plucky and 
popular Harrow boy of his time, as Palmerston 
was accounted, went through the intermediate 
stage of a Scotch University (Edinburgh) before 
going to Cambridge in 1803. These were his 
High Tory days . The influence of his first master, 
Canning, did not incline him to any Liberal ten- 
dencies till many years later. He remained an 
enemy to Liberalism in every form till 1828. 

As a Tory he was beaten in the Cambridge 
University Election of 1806. Three years later, 
withouc any change of political faith, the merest 
chance opened for him the path to official pro- 
motion. Spencer Perceval^ the Prime Minister 
of 1809, offered Pemberton Milnes, a repre- 
sentative Yorkshire squire, best known as Lord 
Houghton's father, a place in his Cabinet at the 
Exchequer or the War Office — whichever he pre- 
ferred. Milnes declined, it would seem, out of 
mere indifference. Palmerston accepted, and 
with it took the first step toward political fortune. 

For six years of the Victorian age (1846-52) 
Palmerston found the most congenial of our 
ambassadors and serviceable of his political 
agents in Sir Henry Bulwer, Lord Bailing. This 
most typical specimen of the Palmerstonian 
diplomatist began his ambassadorial course 

187 



Great Victorians 

at Madrid in 1843, continued it at Florence, 
then the seat of the Italian Court, in 1852, 
and ended it at Constantinople as Stratford 
Canning's successor in 1858. Whatever his 
residence, his hand was on the pulse of every 
European Chancellery. Though never quartered 
at Paris, he was always in a special degree behind 
the diplomatic scenes during the early days of 
the Second Empire. As a consequence Palmer- 
ston heard from him every continental incident 
or even piece of gossip before it reached his 
Cabinet colleagues, while he was Lord Aberdeen's 
Home Secretary. At critical seasons Palmer- 
ston met Bulwer in Paris, while occasionally 
Sir Stratford Canning completed the little party. 
One of these gatherings was described to me by 
one who assisted at them . This was a first cousin 
of mine, Edward Herbert, killed in the Marathon 
massacre of 1870. On the occasion now referred 
to he was in Paris for diplomatic business, and 
assisted at the meeting of his chiefs, dining with 
Lord Palmerston, Sir H. Bulwer, and M. Thiers. 
The French statesman asked the English if he 
thought the " sick man," as the Czar Nicholas 
called the Turk, was about to die. Nothing 
could have been more characteristic than Palmer- 
ston 's reply, noted at the time by my relative and 

passed on to me : "I was one day walking in 

188 



Palmerstoniana 

the streets of London, when a fellow foot- 
passenger told me that my pocket-handkerchief 
was hanging out, and that I should lose it. 
' Thank you, sir,' I answered, ' but unless some 
one pulls it out it will not fall.' Turkey is in the 
same position. If she be not thrown down she 
will maintain her place perfectly." 

The most authentic channels for the transmis- 
sion of Palmerstoniana to a later generation were 
Sir Mount Stuart Grant Duff and Abraham Hay- 
ward. After the completion of the new Houses 
of Parliament in 1 8 5 1 much had to be done 
before "Big Ben" could be got into perfect 
working order. " For a long time only two sides 
of the great clock worked properly. A propos 
of the deficiency, at a little dinner-piarty, including 
not only Palmerston but his most fervid assailant, 
the Turcophil, David Urquhart, some one sug- 
gested that the clock should be called Janus, the 
patron saint of politicians. "Or," he added in 
an undertone, looking at Urquhart, " as you 
might say Palmerston." Almost inaudible as the 
whisper seemed, it was not missed by the Home 
Secretary's quick ear. " Very good," he mur- 
mured, with his accustomed " Ha-ha ! " and drew 
the talk to some other topic. 

" Permit me to approach you in the spirit of 
unity ; this must at least gratify you, if novelty 

189 



Great Victorians 

can do so. Our language contains no expression 
of scorn which has not been exhausted in the 
celebration of your character. . . . Your dex- 
terity seems a happy compound of the smartness 
of an attorney's clerk and the intrigue of a Greek 
of the Lower Empire. . . . Having attained the 
acme of second-rate statesmanship', you remain 
fixed on your pedestal for years, the great Apollo 
of aspiring under-strappers." These, with other 
kindred flowers of rhetoric, formed the staple of 
Disraeli's Runnymede letter to Palmerston in 
1836. No word of it is likely to have been read 
out of England. It would, however, appeal more 
directly to a foreign than an English public. Or, 
to speak more correctly, it presaged a personal 
antipathy against Palmerston which came to a 
head on the other side of the Channel during the 
negotiations for creating an independeat Belgium'. 
These were fomented so systematically by Talley- 
rand as nearly to cause a rupture in Anglo-French 
relations. Talleyrand, then the French Ambas- 
sador in London, was possessed with a consuming 
sense of his own importance and superiority to 
the rest of the Corps diplomatique . Palmer- 
ston when head of the Foreign Office received 
him in the same easy way that he received all 
his colleagues. Once or twice, however, he kept 
the veteran diplomatist and wit waiting in his 

190 



Palmerstoniana 

ante-room. This neglect had been received as 
a personal insult. The slighted envoy, on return- 
ing to Paris, poisoned his Royal master's, Louis 
Philippe's, ears with all the current stories of 
Palmerston's flippant insincerity and falseness. 
These so worked upon the Orleanist monarch 
that he was gradually induced to adopt his 
Ambassador's feelings towards the English Secre- 
tary of State, and look upon him as the chief 
enemy of himself as well. These private senti- 
ments had by and by their political consequence. 
The French Government, instead of, as Palmer- 
ston wished, throwing over the Spanish Legiti- 
mists, gravitated more and more closely to the 
Carlists . 

Notwithstanding his easy, genial manner and 
social charm, Palmerston had trod on so many 
diplomatic toes that all the malicious stories in 
any way connected with him were at once re- 
peated in every Chancellery and club. Such was 
an anecdote now to be given, and after all these 
years requiring a few explanatory words. Lady 
Palmerston, the first Viscount Melbourne's 
daughter, had for her first husband the fifth 
Earl Cowper. Even, however, before possessing 
her hand, Palmerston, it was no secret, opened 
her heart. The third Marchioness of Salisbury, 
Lady Beaconsfield, and Mrs. Gladstone all ren- 

191 



Great Victorians 

dered services to their respective lords which 
have passed into a proverb. In social tact, per- 
sonal charm, resourcefulness, and heart-whole 
devotion none of them could have surpassed Lady 
Palmerston. Her son, William Cowper, was being 
introduced in her drawing-room by his stepfather 
to a foreign Ambassador, who, not catching the 
name, looked inquiringly at Palmerston, then said 
with a smile, " On voit bien, monsieur, que c'est 
votre fils ; il vous ressemble tant." 

When I first saw at Tiverton the man who had 
represented the place for just over thirty years 
I heard the story, and, even as a boy, instinctively 
doubted it, that Lady Palmerston cured any little 
ailment in her husband by, on its earliest sign, 
making him drink a bottle of brown sherry a 
day. Chance enabled me to seek confirmation 
or contradiction of this story from the late Lord 
Granville's brother, Mr. E. K. Leveson-Gower, 
whose acquaintance I owed to one of my oldest 
and kindest friends, the late Mr. H. S. Stokes, 
the Clerk of the Peace at Bodmin, and the highly 
cultivated and noble-minded gentleman, as Mr. 
Leveson-Gower justly called him, who managed 
his election business for many years . The answer 
to my inquiries came as follows : " Lord Palmer- 
ston in all his life never drank as much brown 

sherry as would fill a pint bottle. He took tea 

192 



Palmerstoniana 

and coffee very sparingly, and wine of any kind 
more sparingly still. But before mounting his 
horse for the ride to Whitehall in the miorning he 
sipped with his biscuit a glass of the palest and 
driest Amontillado or Manzanares sherry. At 
dinner in the usual way he might take as much 
of the same vintage again." 

As regards his intercourse with foreign diplo- 
matists^ he always attributed his success in 
mystifying them to his way of speaking the 
truth and nothing but the truth, which, habituated 
to speech of another kind, they did not believe, 
and so perplexed and puzzled themselves. How- 
ever true they might have been, some of the 
Palmerstonian utterances were calculated to try 
the patience, if they did not obscure the under- 
standing, of those whom they concerned or who 
were their subjects. Of this the classical instance 
belongs to the Spanish marriages episode in 
1846-7 (and may be found in Ashley's " Palmer- 
ston," vol. ii. pp. 85-7). He then described 
the Duke of Cadiz, two months afterwards King 
of Spain, as an " absolute and Absolutist fool ! " 
while the Emperor of Austria was put down as 
the " next thing to an idiot I " 

These outbursts, rather than the other little 
vagaries too well known to be repeated here, 
and greatly exaggerated at the time, caused Lady 

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Great Victorians 

Palmerston much anxiety as to their pohtical 
results. In 1861, when well over seventy, he 
retained many of the personal endowments and 
tastes which had won for him the name of 
" Cupid." Lady Shaftesbury, as his relative and 
well-wisher, remonstrated with him on his flirta- 
tions with young married women. " You know," 
she said, "it is really most ungentlemanly ; it is 
horribly irreligious ; and, besides, it can never be 
successful." Now for the incorrigible old gentle- 
man's reply. " As regards its being ungentle- 
manly, that is a question of taste ; I think it most 
gentlemanly . To take the religious point of view, 
I admit the custom of the Churches differs. But 
about its being unsuccessful, your ladyship is 
totally misinformed, for I have never known it 
fail." 

A perfect feminine Gallio in her way. Lady 
Palmerston cared for none of these things, or 
smiled them off as by no means to her lord's dis- 
credit. What did concern her was the appalling 
possibility of his being put into a minority on an 
important division. In the year just mentioned 
came the Schleswig-Holstein question, with all 
its complications and its more critical sequel. 
The subject in m:any of its bearings was excru- 
ciatingly abstruse, and was thus described by, 
Palmierston himself : " The affair of the Duchies 

194 



Palmerstoniana 

has never been understood by more than three 
persons. One is a German diplomatist, and he 
is dead ; the second is a Danish professor, who 
is now in a lunatic asylum' ; the third is myself, 
and I have forgotten it." 

Meanwhile, the v/anton attack of Germany on 
Denmark aroused the English public to indig- 
nation, and caused the Government, which would 
not take up arm's for the weaker State, to tremble 
in the balance. On the last night of the debate 
Lady Palmerston listened in evident agitation 
from her box in the gallery. When it was all 
over she rushed downstairs to congratulate her 
husband. He had just come into the lobby ; 
she at once embraced him with a sounding kiss. 
" Lady Palmerston," said to me the late Earl 
Granville, " did more than keep her husband in 
health and his followers together. She also kept 
the peace between him and the Duke of Welling- 
ton, whom he had never forgiven for suddenly 
dismissing him from the Eoreign Office in 1834. 
In that year, and more than once afterwards, 
though few historians, and, I think, no diarists, 
have brought out the fact, the two men were 
constantly doing all they could to upset each 
other. The Duke relied for success on the great- 
ness of his achievements and name, Palmerston 
on his extraordinary popularity. It was not till 

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Great Victorians 

after Huskisson's death in 1830 that a renewal 
of personal relations became possible. Seven 
years later the rivalry returned in an acuter form 
than ever. One of the Tory ladies at the Palace 
made the silly but fatal mistake of supposing 
she could prejudice the young; Queen Victoria 
against her early Whig surroundings by letting 
her see the fun into which the smaller Tory news- 
papers turned her games of chess with Lord 
Melbourne, her filial solicitude for his health, 
and her girlish gratification at Palm'erston's com- 
pliments to her industry and capacity, carefully 
repeated to her as they were by her ladies in the 
Palmerstonian interest. The present writer had 
another of Palmerston's remarks from a lady 
who was at Windsor at the time, and who heard 
Lady Charlemont speak of the credit due to the 
Duchess of Kent for having made her daughter 
what she was. "The Duchess," interposed 
Palmerston, "has every possible merit. But 
the Queen has an understanding which could 
be made by no one, and will go down to 
history as the greatest Sovereign of her sex 
whO' ever ruled this realm." The talk was 
taken up by the Duchess of Sutherland, who, 
as a proof of the Queen's industry and 
capacity for work, said that from morning to 
night she took no relaxation from' her duties, and 

196 



Palmerstoniana 

that when her maid was combing out her hair she 
was surrounded by crimson boxes and reading 
official papers. "And," said Palmerston, "it 
will before long be seen that Her Majesty- 
does a great deal more than this." It was, as 
Palmerston eventually found to his cost. 

The Duchess of Sutherland's tribute is of the 
more significance because only a few days before 
paying it she had been sharply rebuked by the 
Queen for keeping dinner waiting half an hour. 
"It is not so much," the Royal lady had said, 
" that it inconveniences me, but it tries the 
patience of my guests." 

Talleyrand was not the only member of the 
diplomatic circle who found Palmerston a little 
trying. The present Lord Esher's father-in-law, 
Sylvain Vanderwere, while Belgian Minister, used 
to say : " When the Foreign Secretary gave me 
an appointment he always kept me waiting one 
or two hours, and sometimes never appeared at 
all." The mass of Englishmen may have heard 
stories like these at the time, only to laugh at 
them quite in the Palmerstonian manner. And 
the things which in connection with their favourite 
statesman impressed them most were those to- 
day almost forgotten, and even at the time much 
less talked about than the Don Pacifico incident. 
Such was the Eiorence Mather affair in 1852. 

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Great Victorians 

This at first somewhat shook the Palmerstonian 
prestige, but was afterwards placed to the 
Palmerstonian credit. A youth named Mather 
was in the way of Austrian soldiers marching 
through a Florentine street. The officer in com- 
mand, striking him with his sword, cut his head 
open. The father complained to the English 
Ambassador, Sir Henry Bulwer, demanding as 
damages £5,000. Eventually he received £250. 

The actual result did not seem m'uch to affect 
the popular verdict on the Palmerstonian action. 
It was a self-assertive era in our nineteenth-cen- 
tury record. Palmerston personified the temper 
of the time, and received and retained the gallery 
plaudits not only in spite of but sometimes in 
consequence of his mistakes ; for a mistake it 
certainly was, as the Brazilian Minister, Macedo, 
complained in 1852 to an acquaintance of mine^ 
" not to give Brazil a chance of showing the 
sincerity of her objections to the slave trade 
before compelling us to submit to. the right of 
search in our own waters." 

My last sight of this overwhelmingly popular 
type of the aristocratic, autocratic diplomatist 
was some day during the first half of October 
1865, as he mounted his horse in Downing 
Street. A few days later he had gone. In 
Disraeli's novel " Endymion " Lord Rowhamp- 

198 



Palmerstoniana 

ton, Palmerston drawn from the life, dies at his 
desk. The immediate cause of the real Palmer- 
ston's death was a walk on the terrace at Brocket 
without his hat. To the remonstrance upon this 
indiscretion he said, " Oh, it's only what bathers 
call 'taking a header.'" He kept his habitual 
courtesy and cheerfulness to the last, and when, 
a few minutes before dissolution. Lady Palmer- 
ston came into the room, he kissed his hand to 
her. His last words were those of one at work 
on a treaty : " That's article ninety-eight ; now 
go on to the next." ; 



199 



CHAPTER V 

"ARCADES AMBO" 

Palmerston on the Turf — The Palmerstonian pattern in men and 
dress exemplified by W. McCullagh Torrens in his appear- 
ance, manner, stories (the whisky and the Cabinet), and 
by Charles Skirrow — Other early and mid-nineteenth-century 
types of both sexes — The third Sir Robert Peel on his 
father's death — Horse-dealer Quartermaine brings the three- 
hundred-guinea Premier round to Whitehall Gardens — Sir 
Robert's refusal of the high figure followed by the fatal 
accident on Constitution Hill — Outside and inside Pem- 
broke Lodge — Sir Henry Calcraft's introduction to a famous 
veteran in Church and State — Lord John with his wind- 
gauge under the veranda and amid his historical souvenirs 
and illustrious visitors in his drawing-room — Thomas Carlyle 
on misrepresentation of himself and on his own amiability — 
How the first Lord Lytton "being dead, yet speaketh" — 
Lord John for the Jews — What Carlyle thought of Peel, of 
a certain Anglican service on a Scotland-bound steamer, and 
of the Church of England — H. Calcraft's and E. F. Leveson- 
Gower's review of Grevillian and Ellician verdicts — Johnny's 
" calculated indiscretions " and " dirty tricks " — Mr. E. F. 
Leveson-Gower and Lord John — "You will know what to 
say. Good- morning ! " — Charles Greville, George Payne, 
and " the rigour of the game " — Palmerston and Russell 
compared — Specimens of Palmerstonian wit and wisdom, 
and of Russellian aphoristic invective in duel with Sir 
F. Burdett — How Whigs are born not made, and Lord John 
200 



" Arcades Ambo " 

preaches " rest and thankfulness " — Canning on the " mud- 
bespattered Whigs " — Cobbett's vernacular about the Whigs 
in general, and Lord John in particular, as the "shoy-hoys" 
of politics — When statesmen fall out, body- servants come by 
their own — What Sir John Graham's valet found in his 
master's pocket, and what he did with it — " The Widow's 
Mite " : how Lord John came to be so called — Lord John 
Russell and Earl Granville compare notes about preparatory 
schools and agree in thinking mutton fat detestable — 
Adolphe Thiers on Viscount Palmerston and Lord John 
Russell — The Palmerstonian laissez-alkr in private as well 
as public life, especially in connection with household 
bills — Something savours more of the " hawk " than of the 
"merry-man" — How Palmerston and Russell made friends 
in 1858, and "hated each other more than ever" — The 
secret truth about Palmerston's dismissal from the Foreign 
Office in 1852 — The real cause not so much his "scores off 
his own bat " as his patronage of revolutionary movements 
abroad and the English Court's preference for Legitimacy in 
general and Austrian Absolutism in particular — Palmerston's 
"tit-for-tat" with John Russell — The Militia Bill brings in 
the Conservatives under Lord Derby and puts Malmesbury 
in Palmerston's place in the Foreign Office — Malmesbury on 
himself for peace, retrenchment, and reform — His Foreign 
Office economies — His short way with the Foreign Service 
messengers. 



In his international sympathies, as in a certain 
amount of his statesmanship^, Palmerston typified 
the reaction towards democracy from the indiffer- 
ence to racial connections or aspirations of the 
Vienna Congress in 1 8 1 5, and from Metternich's 
system of police despotism at home, together 
with contempt for popular, even national, move- 

?0l 



Great Victorians 

ments abroad, that led to the revolution of 1848. 
With these public tendencies he combined, in the 
whole habit of his private life, his associations 
and pursuits, the patrician tastes of the period 
to which he belonged, coupled with an easy 
acceptance of the social fusion at whose begin- 
nings he had assisted, and whose progress he did 
much to encourage. In his fondness for the 
Turf, in his intercourse with his trainer, John 
Day, and all his stable connection, he not only 
reflected the social temper of his own time, but 
in his own person presaged the ruling passions, 
in their most familiar aspects^ as well as in all 
their levelling influence, of the era following his 
own. Like the Duke of Wellington and many 
others, filling a large place in the public eye and 
mind, he became a rpattern as well as a type. 
George IV, after consultation with his tailor, 
may have brought in the frock-coat. Palmer- 
ston was the first to make it a compiulsory article 
of costume. Black and white check trousers 
when worn by Palmferston became universal . 'He 
laid them aside, and striped nether garments were 
soon the only wear. With the Palmerstonian 
dress there came in, for gentlemen of ma.ture 
age, whether of St. Stephen's, at Newmarket, 
or in the City, the Palmerstonian blend of genial 
dimity and smiling ease of pjersonal bearing;. 

?o? 



" Arcades Ambo " 

There lived, till quite the close of the nineteenth 
century, two perfect and miscellaneously known 
specimens of the Palmerstonian school . One was 
W. McCullagh Torrens, who died April 26, 1894, 
from a hansom cab accident. This clever and 
kindly Irishman had long shared the social life 
of St. Stephen's with Palmerston, and had so 
caught his phrases that the terse sayings often 
attributed to Palmerston himself were really those 
of Torrens . Such was the description of so mlany 
Irish reforms as doomed to failure because they 
attempted to make sovereign proprietors out of 
pauper peasants. So, too, though Paltnerston 
may have thought it of his particular friend. 
Sir Patrick O'Brien, it was not he, but Torrens, 
who said, " Eh, Pat, if it weren't for the whisky 
we'd have you in the Cabinet." The self-posses- 
sion and dignity of the disciple were at least 
equal to those of the master ; and during the 
latter half of his life, after his second marriage,^ 
Torrens, seated at the top of his dinner -table iii 
Eaton Square, recalled to mlany of his guests the 
Amphitryon of Cambridge House. 

The second of the two nineteenth -century 
hosts visibly cast in the Palmerstonian mould 
was Charles Skirrow, by profession a solicitor, 
subsequently a taxing niaster in the High Court 
of Justice, the kindest and smoothest of men, 

203 



Great Victorians 

with a face which was the picture of discreet 
conviviaUty, a remarkably sound taste in wine, 
and in his earher days more or less mixed up, 
socially as well as professionally, with Palmer- 
ston and the first Lord Westbury. Among the 
other figures, varying in magnitude, of the 
Palmerstonian era to be met with during an after- 
noon walk from' Pall Mall to Westminster were 
the two inseparables. Lord Adolphus (Dolly) 
Fitzclarence with Sir George Wombwell, wild- 
eyed, thin, fiercely gesticulating Nineveh Layard, 
and Sibthorp and Chisholm Anstey, the two 
men who were to Palmerston at Westminster 
what Rowcliffe was to him' at Tiverton. But 
most observed of all observers would, of course, 
have been bell -hatted, white -waistcoated, wide- 
trousered Sir Robert Peel, destined to meet his 
death through two galloping young ladies, who 
caused his horse to shy, a rib breaking and 
piercing the lung.^ Going imto the Park one 
would have seen two or three ladies, for the 

^ The third Sir Robert Peel, the minister's son, once showed 
me, outside his house in Whitehall Gardens, the exact spot at 
which Quartermaine, the best-known dealer of those days, stationed 
the horse he had brought round for his father's inspection. "His 
name," said the dealer, " is The Premier." " And his price ? " said 
Sir Robert. "Three hundred guineas." "More than I care to 
give," was the rejoinder. The animal actually purchased, costing 
about that sum, stumbled, threw, and killed its rider, 

204 



" Arcades Ambo " 

most part well mounted and well equipiaged. 
Anonyma in Rotten Row was then the subject of 
innumerable letters in The Times. Agnes Wil- 
loug'hby^ to be followed some years later by 
Cora Pearly queened it among- the " pretty horse- 
breakers/' but was a poor substitute for the 
typical Palmierstonian demi-monde notoriety, Lola 
Montez, the bold-faced, black -haired lady whose 
sole beauty lay in her brilliantly flashing eyes. 
There would be the Countess de Landsfeld, as 
she had been created by the old King of Bavaria, 
who, to avoid expulsion from his capital, had 
made her escape in man's dress. From Switzer- 
land she came to this country, started a little 
establishment in Half-Moon Street, came across 
an officer in the Life Guards who shared her 
fondness for dogs, married him bigamously, 
retired across the Atlantic, and died in San 
Erancisco . 

As representative of his age, though from a 
very different point of view, as Palmerston was 
the rival with whom he had so many skirmishes, 
heavy or light, and who outlived him by nearly 
thirteen years— Lord John Russell. On a fine 
afternoon in the summer of 1875 ^ was walking 
through the great Park, and was just leaving 
it by the Richmond Gate, when I caught sight 

of a little old gentleman on a spacious wicker 

205 



Great Victorians 

chair, or couch, under the veranda of the Crown 
villa known as Pembroke Lodge, occupied 
for some thirty years by Earl Russell. At the 
moment he was apparently occupied with ad- 
justing a mechanical contrivance of a sort I had 
never seen before. While thus looking I was 
accosted by my acquaintance, then at the Board 
of Trade, Sir Henry Calcraft, the scion of an 
old Whig family, who knew everything about 
everybody, and not to know whom was indeed 
to be unknown oneself. " Watching," he said, 
" old Johnny's diversions with his wind-gauge ? 
If you like, I will take you in and introduce you 
to him." Five minutes afterwards I formed a 
humble unit in the most illustrious company which 
I had then ever been privileged to enter. The 
host was talking with great animation by turns 
to J. A. Eroude and W. E. H'. Lecky, the his- 
torians, to Sir Joseph Hooker, the director of 
Kew Gardens, and to Thomas Carlyle, the 
prophet and sage of Chelsea. 

I had seen the veteran for the first time a few 
months earlier in the House of Lords during a 
debate on Irish coercion or the Endowed Schools 
Act, I cannot remember which. In parliament- 
ary utterance what the " Ha-ha ! " was to Pal- 
merston the " Hem-hem ! " was at his latest to 
Lord John. His speech was little more than 

206 



" Arcades Ambo " 

dumb -show, for only an occasional word mounted 
to the gallery where I had my seat. Weariness 
of the situation and the weakness of age then 
gave the observer no chance of seeing, as Bulwer- 
Lytton in " New Timbn " has it :— 

. . . our statesmen when the steam is on, 

And languid Johnny glows to glorious John ! 

When Hampden's thought, by Falkland's muses dress'd. 

Lights the pale cheek and swells the generous breast ; 

When the pent heat expands the quickening soul, 

And foremost in the race the wheels of genius roll ! 

The contrast between the old Whig as I had 
thus caught a glimpse of him in the " gilded 
chamber " and as I now saw and, for the first 
time^ heard him in the home lifle he loved, enabled 
one to realize the transformation described by 
the poet . His conversation was not monologue ; 
at the same time, it had little of the give-and-take 
belonging to casual talk. He spoke seldom, 
and then chiefly to Garlyle and Hooker. When^ 
however, he opened his lips, the words coming 
from them were compact of long experience, full 
of wisdom, and memorable for their point. The 
announcement of Mr. Charles Villiers, to whom 
as to a family friend I had been known all my 
life, secured mfe the notice of the old Earl. He 
had seen me looking at the bric-a-brac on the 
velvet -covered slab just above the chimney- 

207 



Great Victorians 

piece. I heard the new-comer say to him of me, 
" Bickham Escott's nephew." " I recollect your 
uncle," said to me the master of Pembroke Lodge, 
" and here "—pointing to one of the medals — 
" is a memorial of a cause in which I had his 
co-operation^ though in his time nothing came 
of it." The souvenir in question bore the in- 
scription : — 

Have we not one Father? 
Hath not one God created us ? 

Lord John Russell's constituency for the twenty 
years before his peerage was the City of London. 
The movement for the complete enfranchisement 
of Jews began in 1835; it was only crowned 
with success in 1858, when, on the 26th of July, 
Baron Rothschild took his seat for the City. 
By that time most of those who had laboured 
with him had gone, and my own relative, to 
whom he referred, had died in 1853. As for 
my fellow-visitors on this occasion to Pembroke 
Lodge, one could not but notice a certain resem- 
blance to the host in Lecky's incisively senten- 
tious talk, gentle and subdued manner, though 
stopping short of the frigidity traditionally attri- 
buted to Lord John. The warm atmosphere of 
a country house was necessary, they said, to thaw 

Lord John's iciness, and to bring him out as 

208 



" Arcades Ambo " 

he was known by those who saw him at his 
best when staying with Lord Lansdowne at 
" Bowood " or Lord Stanhope at " Chevening." 
Concerning Froude, whom I had met before, 
and with whom I became intimate afterwards, 
something will be said later. As regards the 
author of " Sartor Resartus," I saw him at Pem- 
broke Lodge for the first and last time. Before 
he left he led me to a corner of the room, or of 
the veranda outside, and gave me a few^ words 
entirely to myself. " You may hear it said of 
me that I am cross-grained and disagreeable. 
Dinna believe it. Only let me have my own way 
exactly in everything, with all about me precisely 
what I wish, and a sunnier or pileasanter creature 
does not live. And now," he said, "that I have 
heard your name, let me tell you I met some one 
bearing it, maybe your father, on board the 
steamer by which some time ago I was voyaging 
to Scotland. It was Sunday; we had a little 
religious service on deck. He read from the 
Church of England Prayer Book, delivered a 
short and sensible discourse, leaving me, like 
others, with the feeling that the English Estab- 
lishment is the best thing of its kind out." 
With regard to Lord John himself, Sir Henry 
Calcraft, reared from infancy in Whig aristocratic 
circles, almost congratulated me on my recep- 

209 o 



Great Victorians 

tion beneath the roof to vv^hich he had introduced 
me. " The truth," he went on to explain, " is that 
Lord John's manner^ frigid and forbidding as at 
first it seems, is rather that of his period than of 
the man himself. In comparison with Sir Robert 
Peel he is cheeriness and geniality personified. 
No one," he went on, " could have hit him off 
better than a man to whom I will find an oppor- 
tunity of introducing you one day, and whose 
memoirs a few years hence we shall all^ I suppose, 
be reading." This was an allusion to Charles 
Greville, then Clerk of the Council, a great figure 
at Newmarket and on every racecourse. His 
phrase, so pleasing to Calcraft, describing the 
great Sir Robert, was " a cold feeler and a 
cautious stepper." " Russell," resumed Calcraft, 
" had always an attached personal connection. 
Peel, on the other hand, was always without 
friends." 

Before we left Pembroke Lodge Carlyle put 
the truth to m.'e pretty well when he said, " Peel 
can bribe, coerce, palaver, can win votes but 
not hearts." Some years later I repeated this 
estimate to one of Peel's literary trustees, Charles 
Stuart Parker, who, when a Fellow of Univer- 
sity, had examined me in the final schools, and 
to Peel's eldest son. Sir Robert the third. They 
both circumstantially denied its truth. Nor, as 

2IO 



" Arcades Ambo " 

I knew from their conversation, oould any public 
man haLve personally endeared to himself in a 
warmer degree not only Parker, but Cardwell, 
the most famous and staunohest of Peelites, who 
lived well into my time. " My father's manner," 
said to mie the third Sir Robert, " was not remark- 
able for abandon, but he felt very deeply and 
quickly. I have seen the account of a railway 
accident cause him to turn deadly pale, and even 
go off in a faint. What really," continued the 
great man's son, " stung my father in the attacks 
on him for his grand apostasy Was the ignoring 
of his words four years earlier, 1842, that on 
the general principles of Free Trade there existed 
no great difference in opinion. 'All,' he said, 
' agree in the broad rule that we shall buy in the 
cheapest market and sell in the dearest.' " There 
were then three different methods of dealing with 
the doome^d Corn Laws. One was the fixed duty 
of the Whigs, the other Peel's own original sliding 
scale, and last, the total abolition of the Re- 
pealers. The Irish famine determined Peel's 
course. In the Duke of Wellington's words, 
" Rotten potatoes did it all : they put Peel in 

his d d fright." As a fact, and as some of 

those I had met at Pembroke Lodge reminded 
one, some weight must be given to Lord John's 
" Edinburgh Letter," denouncing the Corn Laws 

211 



Great Victorians 

as the blight of commerce, the bane of agri- 
culture, the source of bitter divisions among 
classes, the cause of penury, fever, mortality, 
and crime among the people. 

Outbursts of this sort sometimes staggered his 
party colleagues. They had the effect, however, 
of fixing the national attention upon their author. 
They made him, indeed, always the talk, and 
sometimes in the City, as well as in the country, 
the idol of the hour. Johnny's " calculated indis- 
cretions," as they seemed to som^e, or " dirty 
tricks," as, without any real resentment, they 
were loosely called by others, were the most in- 
teresting of political phenomena, periodically re- 
current during the first half of the Victorian age. 
Afterwards they were to some degree, if uncon- 
sciously, imitated by the Lord Salisbury of our 
time in the " blaze of apology " which now and 
then lit up his place, or the sensational candour 
with which, when meditating a fresh stroke, Lord 
Rando]p*h Churchill took the multitude into his 
confidence . 

Lord John, indeed, not only never advertised 
after the Churchillian fashion, but was apt to be 
severe about any approach to doing it in his 
partisans or opponents . He did, however, realize 
the need in a democratic age of occasionally em- 
phasizing his views for the benefit of himself, if 

212 



^' Arcades Ambo " 

not of his party. All personally acquainted with 
Palmerston and Russell felt that the two resem- 
bled each other in there being noi pose about 
either . In the autumn session of 185 4, Mr. E . F . 
Leveson-Gower, Lord Granville's brother, was 
to second the Address in the Commons. He 
therefore had to see the Prime Minister, Lord 
John, on the subject. On the Premier therefore 
he called, to receive from him, in the way of in- 
struction, nothing more than these words : "I am 
glad you are going to second the Address. You 
will know what to say. Good-morning." 

The reserve of Russell was as much a part of 
his nature as the colloquial urbanity of Palmer- 
ston. In conversation with Palmerston during 
their earlier days. Napoleon III once attributed 
his habitual taciturnity to the influence on him of 
long connection with the grave, silent men of the 
English turf. These associations never had the 
same effect on the evergreen minister. Like all 
those of his time and set, Charles Greville and 
George Payne, as much as others who were never 
on a racecourse in their lives, he took his amuse- 
ments in earnest, and might have been bracketed 
with Charles Lamb's Sarah Battle in upholding 
" the rigour of the game." In the very year, I 
believe, of his death, he left " Broadlands " after a 
very early breakfast on a ride tO' Littleton stables 

213 



Great Victorians 

to see his horses gallop, and only returned home 
in time for a late luncheon. A little earlier in the 
same twelvemonth he had trotted down on a 
" speech day " to Harrow from his house in 
Piccadilly, a distance of more than ten miles, 
done well within the hour. Sir Henry Calcraft, 
to whose good offices, as I have said, I owe the 
material for a comparison between the two men, 
had a rare experience of the public service in 
nearly all its departments and knew thoroughly 
the official qualities of its chief directors. "At 
the Home Office, the Foreign Office, and wher- 
ever else they may have served," said this 
remarkably competent critic, " Palmerston and 
Russell established a tradition which will make 
itself felt to the end of time. In all matters of 
detail, such as the principles of caligraphy, the 
docketing of papers, and very much else, they 
created precedents and set examples which have 
operated as widely and effectively as if they had 
been the reforms recommended by a Parliamen- 
tary Commission." 

Palmerston and Russell were both credited by 
the contemporaries who knew them best with 
contributing to the political phrase-book words 
or expressions which it was predicted would long 
survive their authors. Palmerston's "mankind, 
taking them altogether, are very good fellows, 

214 



" Arcades Ambo " 

but rather conceited," may be matched by 
Russell's stinging rebuke to Sir Francis Burdett 
when that former champion of popular rights had 
ratted to the Tories. "The cant of patriotism 
may be as disgusting as the right honourable 
baronet says. I will point out, however, that what 
may be no less disgusting is the recant of patriot- 
ism." *' Rest and be thankful " as a protest 
against present agitation for a further suffrage 
enlargement at once passed into the currency 
of the language and exposed the maker of the 
expression to an amount of Radical indignation 
which it is a testimony to Russell's greatness that 
he so soon and so completely lived down. Can- 
ning, Liberal in all things except Reform, had 
already described " the mud-bespattered Whigs, 
with laurels in their hats and brickbats at their 
heels, bedaubed with ribbons and rubbish, and 
only rescued from their overpowering popularity 
by a detachment of His Majesty's Horse Guards." 
Cobbett now coined one of his effective nick- 
names, which, sticking for a little time like a 
burr, was shaken off completely by Russell's 
moral force. "Lord John," he said, "and the 
rest of the Whigs are like ' shoy-hoys ' [ the 
Hampshire word for scarecrows] put up to 
frighten thievish sparrows, looking very formid- 
able at a distance, but soon discovered to be 

215 



Great Victorians 

perfectly harmless. The borough-mongers care 
no more for such men than the sparrow in the 
garden of a neighbour of mine at Botley, which 
sat hammering out the peas on the crown of the 
hat of a sham man that had been stuck up to 
frighten the sparrows away." 

Historians and biographers may have been 
chary in giving instances of it, but the attribute 
that, in the same degree as the premeditated dis- 
plays of fitful impetuosity, interested the contem- 
porary public was Lord John's essentially British 
and typically patrician serenity of bearing and 
temper. With admirable felicity and point Bulwer- 
Lytton interpreted the popular appreciation of 
this trait in the "New Timon," 1846. This 
incident is more noteworthy still because it 
marked one of Russell's earliest departures from 
Whiggism towards Radicalism. 

Next, cool, and all unconscious of reproach, 
Comes the calm "Johnny who upset the coach." 

The coach was the 1834 Grey Ministry, the occa- 
sion the debate on the superfluous funds of the 
Irish Church. The whole subject had long caused 
much difference of opinion in the Whig Cabinet. 
Up to now the English language had failed to 
provide Stanley, then a Whig minister, the future 
fourteenth Earl of Derby and Tory chief, with 

216 



" Arcades Ambo " 

words to express his loathing of O 'Conn ell. In 
the discussion that took place towards the end lof 
May he changed his tone and spoke quite 
pleasantly of the Irish dictator. Lord John, 
though quite consistently with everything he had 
said and thought on the subject, went further by 
declaring the revenues of the Irish Church to 
exceed the sum necessary for the moral and 
religious instruction of its members. Suppressed 
sensation all round, amid which Stanley scribbled 
on a piece of paper the words, " Johnny's upset 
the coach," and passed it to Sir James Graham. 
A little later the words had their fulfilment in the 
resignations of the Duke of Richmond, Lord 
Ripon, as well as Graham and Stanley them- 
selves. Of those last two Graham put the paper 
into his pocket. His servant, a very smart fellow, 
found it there the same night, and at once took 
it to Printing House Square. The Times next 
morning intimated the fatal ending of the 
Cabinet crisis. The Whig place-men and place- 
hunters, the tapers and tadpoles of " Coningsby," 
forming the entire tribe of " twelve -hundred -a - 
yearers " in real life, never forgave the indiscre- 
tion which hastened their doom and quickly pre- 
pared the way for the Tory Government under 
Peel as Premier and Wellington as Foreign 
Secretary. Deep and long, if not loud, at 

217 



Great Victorians 

Brooks's and among the Cavendish section of 
Whiggism were the curses heaped on " the con- 
ceited puppy " who by blurting out the fatal 
secret had let in the Tories. 

Of all the public men surviving to our times, 
Lord Granville showed the quickest and truest 
insight into Lord John's idiosyncrasies. The two 
men differed widely in tastes, temper, habits, and 
interests of mind and life, but when together by 
themselves and in a congenial frame would cap 
each other's stories of their earliest days, especially 
of their tribulations at preparatory schools and 
their devices to avoid eating the mutton fat which 
it meant a punishment to leave on their plates. ^ 

Russell's betrothal and marriage to the lady 
who had been the wife of Lord Ribblesdale 
combined with shortness of stature to secure him 
the sobriquet of " the Widow's Mite." His non- 
chalance on suddenly trying conjunctures secured 
him the admiration even of those smarting from 
the party havoc worked by his receat words. 
Only a few days later in the May that had seen 

* The conversational intimacy of the two finds innumerable 
illustrations in Lord Fitzmaurice's encyclopaedic biography, at 
once a treasure-house of nineteenth-century international politics, 
alike in their domestic and foreign aspect, and of society in 
the same epoch sketched from behind the scenes. Beyond my 
obligation to that work I owe much also to Lord Granville's 
brother, Mr. E. F. Leveson-Gower, as well as others, like him, 
unhappily no longer here. 

2i8 



" Arcades Ambo ^' 

him " upset the coach," he was walking with 
Samuel Rogers across St. James's Park. The 
pair met full face the trio whose resignation Lord 
John had caused. " I," Rogers told Kinglake, 
" stopped to speak to them. Johnny walked on, 
but framed his features into an expression imply- 
ing that he thought less of them than of the dirt 
that soiled his boots." " Palmerston," said 
Thiers, who took the correct measure of both, 
" was guided par la caractere, non par la raison." 
In private as well as public laissez-aller had 
become his motto. He never troubled about 
tradesmen's little accounts, from no idea of keep- 
ing them out of their money, but from mere 
carelessness. The frequent consequence was a 
lawyer's letter. One of these, more peremptory 
in tone than usual, had the signature, " Hawk and 
Merriman." " Really," said Palmerston, tossing 
it to one of his secretaries, " they should be told 
that this savours more of the hawk than of the 
merry -man." His political associates received 
much the same treatment. As deeply interested 
in politics as Melbourne, he often showed as 
little good faith as Russell. None ever knew 
exactly where they were with him. Until he 
became supreme over his own party nobody could 
be quite sure whether he was going to nobble 

the Tories or to square the Radicals. 

219 



Great Victorians 

All this was as well known to his official col- 
leagues as to the critics behind the scenes, such 
as Greville. In Melbourne's second administra- 
tion (1835-41), Clarendon and Palmerston were 
respectively Lord Privy Seal and Foreign Secre- 
tary. "It is impossible," said Melbourne to 
Clarendon one day at Windsor, " that this 
Government can go on ; Palmerston in com- 
munication with the Tories— Palmerston and 

Ashley " Then he stopped. Clarendon took 

up his parable. " What ! You think Palmerston 
and the Tories will come together? " Melbourne 
nodded assent ; and when asked, " Which will 
come to the other? " chuckled, grunted " I don't 
know ! " laughed, and rubbed his hands. As to 
the Tories, the dozen attempts to unite Palmerston 
with Derby only failed because Palmerston would 
not give up Free Trade and Derby from 1846 
led the Protectionists. 

The Melbournian dispensation just referred to 
required, no doubt, Melbourne's tact and humour 
to keep it together during the six years of its life. 
Its internal dissensions and recriminations were 
always dooming it to death. During the quiet 
intervals the Prime Minister went to sleep. The 
Cabinet's brains and mainsprings were Russell 
and Palmerston, both immeasurably above the 
Prime Minister, with infinitely more force of 
character and knowledge of affairs. Russell had 

220 



" Arcades Ambo " 

inherited, not formed, his opinions. Representing 

the Whig tradition, he believed in the infalli- 

bihty of its exponents or oracles, from Sidney to 

Somers, from Somers to Fox and to himself. 

It was part of the pirovidential order that the 

Great Revolution families should govern the 

country in unbroken succession throughout the 

centuries. The difficulties into which he got the 

Whigs had the same cause as those created by 

Palmerston for his partisans and himself— the 

practice inveterate in each of playing for his own 

hand. "The worst of Johnny," said "Bear" 

Ellice, " is that he is always springing mines under 

our feet or bidding for popularity over our heads . 

One never goes to bed at night without knowing 

whether we shall not wake up to be confronted 

in the morning by a Stroud Letter, an Edinburgh 

Letter, or a Durham Letter, or that when the 

House opens he may not denounce his friends as 

he did denounce them on the conduct of the 

Crimean War." Palmerston, on the other hand, 

entirely ignored the notion of subordination or 

community of responsibility. 

During the Melbournian era, in the election 
of a Speaker, Russell, by his moderation, averted 
a collision between the two sides of the House^ 
certain, had Palmerston been left to himself, to 
have caused much inconvenience. The final 
reconciliation between Palmerston and Russell in 

2Zl 



Great Victorians 

1858 was no drawing-room incident, as it has 
been described, but was managed entirely by 
" Bear " Ellice and took place at his house. After 
shaking hands, they may, as Lady Tankerville 
said, have hated each other more than ever. But 
at the time Ellice's account of their estrange- 
ment differed a good deal from the usual story, 
and may be given now as I had it from ,Lotd 
•Houghton . After the Kossuth incident of 1 8 5 i 
the Radicals dined Palmerston at the Refortn' 
Club, and democratic deputations from Islington 
and Finsbury presented him with congratulatory 
addresses. The Court being strongly pro- 
Austrian, he at once got into trouble, and only 
a plausible plea for turning him out was wanted. 
To have found that in his Hungarian sympathies 
would have been to cem'ent his alliance with the 
Radicals. As a fact, the unpardonable offenioe 
of Palmerston in the Royal eyes, making it sure 
that on the first opportunity he would be sent to 
the " right-about," was neither his prematurely 
expressed partiality for the Second Empire, nor 
the failure to show the Queen, after she had first 
seen and signed them, his alterations in foreign 
dispatches. The true cause of his disgrace was 
purely dynastic. The revolutionary year 1848 
fixed the Court sympathies very strongly on 
Austria against Hungary and against Italy. 
Those feelings had grown in intensity rather than 

232 



" Arcades Ambo " 

diminished three years later. On the occasion 
of Louis Kossuth's visit, the Austrian Ambassador 
in London received rather rough treatment from 
Barclay and Perkins's draymen. This was the 
moment that Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, 
chose for accepting the Reform Club invitation to 
dine, as the courtiers put it, with the rabble — men 
not ten of whom any decent man knew even by 
sight. The Queen and the Prince Consort were 
furious, and the more so because they knew that 
on the issue which had chiefly provoked their 
wrath they could not get rid of the minister. 
The Whigs, therefore, were to go with the least 
possible delay. With a strangeness as of comic 
opera, Palmerston himself hastened the fulfilment 
of the Royal desire. Lord John's former Foreign 
Secretary himself upset his formfer chief by the 
Militia Bill, February 1852. So lightly, however, 
did his Liberalism sit on " Pam " that he was 
perfectly ready to take the Foreign Office under 
Russell's successor. Lord Derby. " The Rupert 
of Debate," however, had other views. According 
to " The Memoirs of an Ex-Minister," he acci- 
dentally met the author of that work and asked 
him to suggest some one for the Foreign Office. 
The third Earl of Malmesbury naturally sug- 
gested himself. Meanwhile the new Prime 
Minister had been angling for Lord Stratford 

de Redcliffe with the Foreign Portfolio as bait ; 

223 



Great Victorians 

he did not even get a bite. The day after the 
meeting with his brother peer just related, Lord 
Derby actually put into the Foreign Office the 
self -proposed Malmesbury, of whom his political 
opponents used unkindly to say that he was never 
less in place than when in place. 

Burke had something to say about the " gentle 
historians " who judge of every man's capacity 
for office by the number of offices he has filled ; 
and the more offices, the more ability. The Earl 
of Malmesbury belonged in his time to three 
Cabinets. In bearing, manner, and a never 
absent sense of his own imiportance, he resembled 
the Lord Sydney of his own period. His father 
had taken the leading part in the abortive nego- 
tiations with Napoleon, first to prevent, and then 
to stop, the great war. The son must have in- 
herited something of the paternal qualifications ; 
for Lord Derby really considered him one of the 
best Secretaries of State with whom he had ever 
served. As " Tamarang " he was favourably 
known in every European capital, Chancellery, 
and Court, and had no serious enemies except the 
Orleanist faction, socially so active and politically 
so powerful in the English polite world during 
the years that opened the second half of the 
Victorian age. Thoroughly ruse as he showed 
himself, he owed more than has ever yet been 
stated to our then French Ambassador, Lord 

224 



" Arcades Ambo " 

Cowley, who not only helped him privately in his 
work but used his influence to prevent many in- 
convenient questions being put to the Foreign 
Secretary in Parliament. 

This third Earl of Malmesbury was something 
more than a man who thought a good deal of his 
family antecedents, his title, and himself. In his 
private as well as official life and doings he 
typified the prudential virtues characteristic of his 
caste in an age when so many of its members 
began to supplement, if not create, their incomes 
by "going into the City." 

My own very slight acquaintance with him 
came about during the earliest eighties in the 
following fashion. His old precis -writer and, 
I think, private secretary as well as Hampshire 
neighbour, a very old-standing friend of mine. 
Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, asked me whether I 
could recommend him a trustworthy and practised 
writer who would share with him the burden of 
preparing his memoirs for the Press. I at once 
named Mr. J. M. Tuohy, then, as now, a dis- 
tinguished member of the Dublin Freeman's 
London staff. There were some preliminaries^, it 
seemed, on which Lord Malmesbury was desirous 
of speaking to me. Nothing could be more frank 
than the Earl's conversation or more considerate 
than his ideas . After some talk on the immediate 
business, he looked at me through his glasses and 

225 p 



Great Victorians 

rather thought he saw in me a family resemblance 
to a relative of mine already mentioned in these 
pages as the victim of the Greek brigands at 
Marathon. The Earl then had something to say 
on general subjects, such as the influence of the 
Press, the effect of the House of Commons on 
foreign policy, of a scheme prepared by himself 
and Sir Henry Wolff for replacing war by arbi- 
tration. " Whatever," he continued, " one's party 
or position, one must adapt oneself to one's times ; 
and I have always worked for peace, retrenchment, 
and reform. Among the leakages I have stopped 
are the foreign service messengers. Very soon 
after first coming into office I reduced them from 
a little less than a score to fifteen in number. I 
also reduced the length and cost of their journeys . 
The salary used to be eight hundred or nine hun- 
dred a year, not including perquisites ; and some 
messengers, with mileage and other allowances, 
brought it up to over a thousand pounds. Lord 
John Russell, who followed me at the Foreign 
Office, first in 1852 and again in 1858, went 
farther and fixed the messengers' emoluments at 
four hundred a year, with travelling expenses and 
a pound a day for pocket-money. Since then 
there has been more cutting down, and in these 
days of electricity and steam locomotion ithe office 
by and by may cease to exist." 

226 



CHAPTER VI 

FROM SIR ROBERT THE THIRD TO LORD DERBY 
THE FOURTEENTH 

A Piccadilly party in the eighties — Enter the third Sir Robert 
Peel — How " Magnifico Pomposo" lays down the law, backs 
his opinion, is proved wrong by the books, and pays up like 
a man — A modern Zimri — From father to son — Sir Robert 
on his seniors, contemporaries, and men and things in general 
— Henry Calcraft's promise of introducing the writer to " the 
lodger in Bruton Street " fulfilled — How Lady Granville ran 
the gauntlet of Mr. Greville's "horrid" friends —The third 
Sir Robert's strange adventures and imposing appearance — 
His views about the fourteenth Earl of Derby — Nineteenth- 
century types of politics and play for the Upper Ten — Legisla- 
tion or thimblerigging ? — Political country houses in the West 
and their company — S. T. Kekewich to be lent to the Liberals 
to make them respectable — Sir Stafford Northcote in the 
bosom of his family and neighbours — Sir Stafford's chestnuts 
— As literate as Thackeray could wish, though himself pre- 
ferring Dickens to Thackeray — At home with Shakespeare 
and the musical glasses — On the practical usefulness of, the 
study of Greek— Sides with Archbishop Temple against Sir 
M. E. Grant-Duff — How Priam in St. James's Palace " waked 
and looked on drawing his curtains by night " — The South 
Devon "knight of the shire," squire of "Peamore," and "the 
Rupert of Debate" at Eton and afterwards — The former 
introduces the writer to the latter — The fourteenth Lord 
Derby at William IV's coronation: "You have the gout; 
must not kneel, ray lord ! " "I really must insist on kneeling, 

327 



Great Victorians 

Sir " — The writer's call at Knowsley — How the Earl preferred 
the gout to the sherry — The Countess prefers the canal barge 
to the railway train, and the Earl the towing-path to either — 
"One thing at a time" — Newmarket leaves no time for 
Imperial or home politics — Receives a wigging from the 
Queen and anticipates being " beaten horse and foot " — The 
" ruler of the Queen's Navee " — Chaffed by his chief about 
his visit to Spithead — The ministerial fish-dinner — Lord 
Derby proposes "Sir John Pakington and the wooden 
spoons of old England " — The Earl makes merry about 
Lord John's " very bad company " with Lord and Lady 
Malmesbury — How for putting on wrong dress he was nearly 
turned out by the porter — The anecdote about the coal- 
scuttle — Succeeds Duke of Wellington as Oxford Chancellor 
in 1853 — Begins with Latin oratory — Ten years later brings 
down gallery and boxes by his Ciceronian welcome to the 
Princess of Wales — " Ipsa adest " — How and where in deal- 
ing with the Duke of Argyll Derby learnt the wisdom of the 
" amuses him and don't hurt me " policy. 

The last chapter introduced a personal link 
between politics and society in the earlier and 
later half of the Victorian era. This was the 
third Sir Robert Peel, of whom, during and after 
the seventies till his death in 1895, ^ saw a great 
deal, always with extreme profit and pleasure to 
myself from his extraordinarily varied experi- 
ences and generally, but not invariably, accurate 
memory. I make this reserve because it was a 
momentary slip in his recollection of the past 
which first brought me to his notice. About the 
time of the then Laureate's peerage (January 

1884), I happened to be one of a little party 

228 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby 

dining at Baron Ferdinand Rothschild's house 
in Piccadilly. Some one ventured on the obser- 
vation that Lord Tennyson would be the first 
peer created for literary eminence alone during 
recent times. Sir Robert waved with his hand 
rather than articulated dissent. " How about 
Macaulay? " I then ventured to hint that the his- 
torian, like the novelist Bulwer-Lytton, had long 
been well known in Parliament, and a Cabinet 
Minister before receiving his title. " What 1 " 
exclaimed Sir Robert, in his most magnificently 
crushing tone and manner, " you the editor of 
the Fortnightly Review, and give yourself away 
like this ! " " Indeed," I meekly persisted, " un- 
less the history books are wrong, Macaulay in 
Melbourne's 1840 Ministry certainly had the War 
Office." " Why," continued Sir Robert, to com- 
plete my annihilation, " there was no Secretary 
of State at the War Office till after the Crimea in 
1857." " Pardon me. Sir Robert, I did not say 
there was, but only that as Secretary-at-War 
Macaulay was one of Melbourne's Ministers ; and 
if I have deceived you and myself, our host's 
library will enable you to confirm your correction 
and secure you my apologies." But Baron 
Ferdinand had been beforehand with us both. 
Having left the room for a moment, he re- 
appeared with that admirable little manual, 

229 



Great Victorians 

Ransome and Acland's " Political History," 
open at page i86, showing the composition of 
the Whig Government as reconstituted after the 
" Bedcham'ber Plot's" failure. "However, I 
acknowledge," said Peel, " I had overlooked the 
Cabinet, which was the real matter, and that you 
were right." 

No parliamentary personage of his time below 
the first rank was better known to the multitude 
in town or country than the third Sir Robert. 
Wherever he might be staying there took place 
no public gathering, religious or secular, into 
which he did not find his way. Once there he 
always received, and seldom refused, an invita- 
tion to mount the platform. With some sug- 
gestion in his ruddy face, heavy, well -waxed 
moustache, dress, and general manner of the 
master of a circus ring, he possessed what Mr. 
Gladstone called the finest voice in the St. 
Stephen's of his time. As versatile in his choice 
of subjects as he was voluble in dealing with 
them, he adopted generally a homely style, 
packed with varied information, and lightened 
with amusing illustrations and personal reminis- 
cences. Disraeli, during Sir Robert Peel's earlier 
days at St. Stephen's, never missed a chance of 
visiting on him a dislike of his father's memory, 

sometimes, so I have been told by those present 

230 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby 

at the time, with some discredit to himself. That 
happened during a Foreign Policy debate of 
the early sixties. Sir Robert Peel, as what was 
then called Liberal-Conservative Member for 
Tamworth, spoke of seeing Mr. Disraeli smile 
at some of his remarks. Disraeli, who, by the 
by, never smiled, called him to order, and even 
went so far as to retort the charge on his 
censor. As it was. Sir Robert did not come off 
second best in the little encounter. So long as 
he had a seat in the House he filled the assembly 
directly he rose to speak, and never moved it 
to such roars of laughter as during his last session, 
when joking about the German patronymic of 
Queen Victoria's sculptor-in-ordinary. Sir Edgar 
Boehm. " Pooh ! " magnificently sniffed Sir 
Robert, "the very name smells." In the same 
vein some years before, more graphically than 
Thackeray in any of his lectures, he described 
George I in his " harem," blubbering " curagao." 
The Court took great offence. The then Prince 
of Wales let it be known to Sir Robert that 
he thought it a mistake. Sir Robert himself 
took an opportunity of explaining that he had 
spoken in a Pickwickian sense, and the matter 
ended. 

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
Was everything by starts and nothing long. 
231 



Great Victorians 

Cast in such a mould, the third Sir Robert was 
predestined to be as often in hot water of every 
kind as Zimri himself. Nor did many weeks 
together pass without once hearing of Turf Club 
episodes in which " Sir Peel " figured, and which 
in more belligerent days might have had serious 
results. The minister's eldest son and name- 
sake during the period of my close acquaintance 
with him lived a great deal at Brighton at the 
New Club. Here he had his bed-sitting- 
room, finely fitted up and furnished, on the first 
floor ; and here, downstairs, he was often as 
visible to passengers on the King's Road outside 
as to members within, the ornament and oracle 
of the place, typically linking in his own person, 
as well as by his own grand manner, the London - 
super-Mare of his own time with the exclusive 
associations of the Pavilion— its titled and un- 
titled demi-reps of the days when the Pavilion 
first rose to the honour and glory of the fourth 
George . 

There were then still living those who could 
recall as well as this chief of South Coast nota- 
bilities the brilliant auspices under which he 
began, and the national position which it had 
seemed his fate to fill. The second Duke of 
Wellington had celebrated the day on which the 

son of his father's old colleague took a wife by 

232 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby 

a splendid banquet in the great gallery of Apsley 
House. By this time the bridegroom had given 
up diplomacy, and for six years had held as 
Liberal-Conservative his father's old seat of Tam- 
worth. Some twenty years later, during our 
Brighton walks and talks, he had much quite 
fresh to say about all this, and about the men of 
his father's time and of his own. 

Some years before the date now looked back 
upon Sir Henry Calcraft had fulfilled his promise 
of presenting me to Charles Greville, the diarist, 
known indifferently as " Punch " Greville, from 
the formation of his nose and back, and as the 
" Cruncher." His most popular sobriquet, how- 
ever, was the " Lodger," because he occupied 
some rooms on an upper floor at Lord Granville's, 
1 6 Bruton Street— a house I was afterwards to 
know very well. His visitors were often the 
racing men who caused Lady Granville to say 
that she dreaded going upstairs because she was 
sure to meet one of Mr. Greville's " horrid " 
friends. The only other caller present when 
Calcraft took me in was that polished and agree- 
able old Turfite, George Payne, whose conver- 
sation with Greville my arrival scarcely 
interrupted . 

" To the Greville school," said to me Sir Robert 
Peel, " politics and racing seemed things which 

233 



Great Victorians 

Providence had joined and which man ought not 
to put asunder." Both were the proper occu- 
pations of a leisured, aristocratic, and wealthy 
class. Parliament, in fact, seemed as much a 
department of sport as the Turf. " Thus my 
grandfather, a high Tory, one of Lord Liver- 
pool's strongest supporters, told his chief that 
he would no longer put his money on the Tories 
but go over to the Whigs if his son, my father, 
were not immediately provided with a high 
political office." That was how Sir Robert be- 
came Irish Secretary in 1809. As for the third 
Sir Robert, the last constituency he contested 
was that in which he passed so much of his 
time. As Gladstonian Home Ruler he stood for 
Brighton in 1889, ^^^ concentrated on himself 
the bitterest personal and political opposition. 
The Primrose League then formed the chief local 
power ; its ladies worked day and night against 
him, and ensured his defeat. In vain he told 
the electors that if they wanted humour in their 
representative he had more fun in his little finger 
than Mr. Gerald Loder in his whole body. The 
cult of Lord Beaconsfield's " favourite flower " 
had robbed him of his only chance. Retaliating 
rather warmly on the " witches " of the Primrose 
League, he was represented by the reporters as 
using another word which rhymes with that, but 

234 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby 

begins with a " &." The proprieties of the 
" Queen of Watering-places " were scandalized, 
and one heard nothing more of the vanquished 
baronet till one read of his death. 

His career connected the very latest ninetenth- 
century politics with those of the regime when 
English democracy was only a phrase, and the 
fourteenth Earl of Derby had yet to take the leap 
in the dark which established it. The late Sir 
Robert reflected in his estimate of that nobleman 
the contemporary ideas concerning him. They 
corresponded exactly with what I had already 
heard from Lord Derby's own Cabinet colleagues, 
such as the fourth Lord Carnarvon. " During 
the year in which he became Prime Minister for 
the first time, 1852, I saw him at Newmarket," 
said to me Sir Robert, " surrounded by a crowd 
of betting men and blackguards of every descrip- 
tion, in the midst of them, roaring with laughter, 
chaffing and joking with everybody, and betting 
Lord Glasgow that he would not sneeze before a 
given moment after taking a pinch of snuff. 
This," he continued, " is exactly what might have 
been expected by one who heard, as I did, when 
a boy of fourteen, from under the gallery, the 
famous ' Thimblerigging Speech.' ^ His science 

^ The Whig Irish Tithe Bill of 1834 had produced from 
O'Connell an amendment for making good the loss to the Church 

235 



Great Victorians 

of parliamentary defence, in Macaulay's words, 
no doubt resembled an instinct ; but," insisted 
Sir Robert, " he was a first-rate debater because 
he was also a consummate actor. The slight 
wave of his hand, the tone of his voice, and the 
spark of his deep-set, eagle eye, brought before 
one the whole scene— the trickster in corduroys 
at the table, the mingled cajolery and menace 
of his voice, the open-mouthed perplexity of the 
bamboozled yokel, and the derisive shouts of 
those who had wit enough not to become 
victims." 

" They ought to get the Conservatives to lend 
them Kekewich, that they might look a little more 
respectable." This is what one used to hear at 
the Carlton whenever the Liberals were in 
office any time between the later fifties and the 
earlier seventies. The then Member for South 

out of several different funds. " I have never," said Stanley, 
•' witnessed any proposal like this which the Government favours 
except among a class of persons not generally received into 
Society. Their skill is shown by the dexterous shifting of a pea 
on a small deal table, placing it first under one thimble, then 
under another, and getting any flat among the bystanders to 
bet under which thimble it is. Even so O'Connell has got the 
pocket of the State, the pocket of the landlord, the pocket of the 
tenant, the Perpetuity Fund, and the Consolidated Fund under 
his various thimbles. When the thimbles are taken up the 
property will be found to have disappeared, and the dupes 



will be laughed at." 



236 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby- 
Devon thus referred to was indeed a magnificent 
specimen of a highly bred " knight of the shire " 
of the old school. As my father's first cousin 
he was good enough during my parents' absence 
abroad, from time to time, to make his house, 
" Peamore," near Exeter, my second home. 
There I was duly presented, not only to local 
celebrities, social and political, without number, 
but to the two Conservative chiefs of the time. 
Sir Stafford Northcote and " the Rupert of 
Debate " himself. Sir Stafford had been my 
father's contemporary at Eton and Balliol. Their 
friendship continued through their working 
lives. Nor can I recall any truer or kindlier 
type of the political squire met with in my 
early Devonshire days than the master of 
"Pynes." My first impression of him is that 
of a much gentler mannered West Country 
sportsman than any other member of that 
class I had ever seen, superficially distin- 
guished from most gentlemen of his sort in that 
when shooting he wore brown polished gaiters 
rather than the high Wellington boots then much 
affected. At Balliol Northcote, together with. 
Dean Stanley, Goulburn, Jowett, and Lake, had 
been scholars when my father was exhibitioner. 
"Our positions there ought," he pleasantly said, 
" to have been reversed, and your father to have 

237 



Great Victorians 

had my scholarship. But," he went on to say, 
" the conditions under which your father got a 
Third Class made it, as we all thought, equal to 
a First." i 

Of the future Lord Iddesleigh's conversation I 
can clearly, and I am sure correctly, recall that 
it was racy of the Devonian soil, abounding with 
local anecdotes, told in the same Devonshire idiom 
and occasionally accent, shared by him with 
another West Country personage, also often seen 
by me at this period, the future Primate, then 
Bishop of Exeter. Many years later my kindest 
and m6st instructive of friends. Sir M. E. Grant- 
Duff, had taken Dr. Temple to task for saying 
that Greek was educationally valuable precisely 
because it was a " dead " language. It brought 
boys into an entirely new order of ideas. Dr. 
Temple contended, and an atmosphere intellec- 
tually stimulating precisely in proportion as it 
was strange. " And," said Sir Stafford, " Temple 
is perfectly right . The ' dead ' languages are 
chiefly useful as the keys of another world from' 
that we live in." In the Exeter district the Squire 
of " Pynes " was famous above all things for his 

^ Ill-health had prevented my relative from reading for anything 
more than a pass. But his earliest papers impressed the ex- 
aminers so favourably that on the second or third day he received 
from them a written request to go into the Honours School. 

238 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby 

stories, " wise saws and modern instances," culled 
from different points of the entire country 
between the Exe and the Tamar or Plymouth 
Sound and Tresco Bay. Of such anecdotes the 
charm evaporates in writing ; and those whom 
they would specially interest know them already. 
The great attraction of Sir Stafford's talk came 
from its being, like himself, " thoroughly literate," 
to use Thackeray's favourite epithet. He was 
just old enough to have held his own in a discus- 
sion on niceties of scholarship with Lord Welles- 
ley, ranked by the Headmaster of Eton above 
Porson himself as Grecian and Latinist. His 
quotations from modern not less than from 
classic authors were always felicitous and ready, 
as the following instance will show. 

During the early eighties I wrote nightly a 
Standard leader at the office ; it always aimed 
at embodying some special information from the 
party leaders. At the desire of my friend and 
editor, W . H . Mudf ord, whose shrewd good sense 
and brains re-created the paper, I called one 
night on Sir Stafford at his St. James's Place 
house. It was very late, and he could not be 
disturbed. I persevered, and was shown into his 
study, whither presently, wrapped in a dressing- 
gown, he descended, looking, as I thought, a 
little tired, but not at all out of temper. No 

239 



Great Victorians 

doubt he noticed the intentness of my gaze. In 
a moment there came from him Goldsmith's 
couplet in the " Haunch of Venison " :— 

"With a visage so sad, and so pale with affright 
Waked Priam in drawing his curtains by night. 

You have," he added, " shortened my beauty 
sleep; but I will try to tell you what I can." ^ 
The fourteenth Earl of Derby had been in the 
same division at Eton as my kinsman Trehawke 
Kekewich, whom he constantly addressed in Latin 
verses begun at school, and resumed many years 
afterwards, as Arboris accipiter. In face and 
bearing the two men were not unlike. The Earl 
had not his schoolfellow's tall, handsome figure, 
but both carried beyond the threshold of old age 
the same prolific crop of tousled and shaggy 
hair, the same hard, aquiline features, and the 
same blunt, masterful manner. The resemblance 
had first been noticed in their school -days ; it 
became more, rather than less, conspicuous as 
the years went on. They called each other 
Rupert and Trehawke. My kinship with the 

^ I had been less fortunate the same evening, a Wednesday, 
in my nocturnal invasion of Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles 
Dilke, then constituting the party of two. Both were out. '"A 
committee," said Mudford, " of the old women of the House of 
Commons ought to inquire how and why the two right honourable 
Members are away so late from their homes." 

240 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby 

latter alone secured me the notice of " the Earl," 
as he used, par excellence, to be known, and 
permission to call at " Knowsley " if I ever 
chanced to be in the neighbourhood, as several 
years later I was. Ushered into his presence in 
the billiard-room, I found him alternately prac- 
tising strokes with his cue and at a little table 
close by writing letters or disp'atches in his beau- 
tifully delicate and clear Italian hand. He must 
then have been completing his threescore years 
and ten, but was physically in better case than 
when, between two and three decades earlier, 
he took the Privy Councillor's oath' to William IV. 
The King then said, " I beg you won't kneel, 
Lord Derby. You have the gout." " Your 
Majesty must allow me." " I won't hear of it. 
I heard my father say you were the best Lord- 
Lieutenant in England, and so you are now." 
*' He takes," I was told by one of his private 
secretaries, " enough exercise tO' wear out two 
or three ordinary men ; only last week he walked 
some part of the way from London to Liver-r 
pool." The explanation of that feat was, it seems, 
this. Lady Derby's health rendered the move- 
ment of a railway train unpleasant, if not in- 
jurious. A barge, therefore, was fitted up for 
her conveyance by canal ; at the side of this, on 
the towing-path, her husband took long spells 

241 Q 



Great Victorians 

of walking, periodically entering her ladyship's 
floating boudoir for meals or rest. About the 
time I visited " Knowsley " a certain very char- 
acteristic story about its master was going the 
rounds. An advertising wine merchant had sent 
him some very particular dry sherry as a panacea 
for gout, to receive in a day or two this acknow- 
ledgment : "I am desired by Lord Derby to 
say that he has tried your sherry, and prefers the 
gout." " Did this," I ventured to ask the private 
secretary, "really happen?" "Most certainly," 
was the reply, " it did, and I ought to know, for 
I wrote the letter." 

A Whig by political descent, Lord Derby some- 
times surprised and inconvenienced his colleagues 
by fidelity to the social traditions of Charles Fox, 
who when abroad for a holiday never opened a 
newspaper except to see the betting at New- 
market. So the Earl, at the height of the diplo- 
matic and international crisis caused by the third 
Napoleon in the April of 1855, on his return 
from the " First Spring Meeting " knew nothing 
about the propositions of the Government at the 
Vienna Conference, though all the newspapers 
scarcely reported or wrote about anything else. 
" Let the world slide," was Christopher Sly'S' 
motto. " One thing at a time," came from Lord 

Derby's lips more frequently than any other 

242 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby 

maxim, and expressed his resolve not to let busi- 
ness interfere with pleasure. " Brains," he would 
also say, " differ less in their quality than in the 
faculty of concentration." 

The Earl sometimes resembled Palmerston in 
his disinclination to adopt as a matter of course 
the Queen's revisions in his dispatches. In 1858 
the Indian Viceroy, Earl Canning, was thought 
by the Home Government to have dealt too gently 
with the natives who had taken the lead in the 
Indian Mutiny. Lord Ellenborough, as Presi- 
dent of the Board of Control, sharply criticized 
his policy in a dispatch, considered by the Court 
to be much too severe. Whole paragraphs to 
which the Queen had taken exception were left 
in the document. As Prime Minister, Lord 
Derby was at once summoned to the Palace, 
and asked to explain his own behaviour in the 
matter, as well as that of his lieutenant in the 
Commons, Disraeli. Meanwhile the Ellen- 
borough dispatch had got into the newspapers, 
and was about to be debated in Parliament. 
Derby himself anticipated being " beaten horse 
and foot," but added, " Bad, however, as our 
cards are, there is just a chance that they may 
contain the winning one." So, indeed, it proved. 
The vote of censure failed in both Houses, be- 
cause, as " the Rupert of Debate " put it. Lord 

243 



Great Victorians 

EUenborough's resignation made the whole 
thing like flogging a dead horse. 

Little checks of this kind were taken very 
lightly by the Earl. His India Bill, transferring 
after the Mutiny the government from the Com- 
ipany to the Crowli, wtent through without a hitch. 
The fish-dinner closed the Session at the end of 
July. One of the ministers then present, the 
Colonial Under-Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, told 
me that Lord Derby was in tearing spirits, crack- 
ing jokes with each of his colleagues in turn;, 
and especially with Sir John Pakington, who 
at a Cabinet a few weeks earlier had tempted, by 
his late arrival, the Prime Minister to poke a little 
fun at him'. " I have been," Sir John excused 
himself, "at Spithead." "Then," said the Earl, 
" I'll be bound there never was such a swell there 
before." Sir John, it seems, was also not quite 
up to time at the Greenwich dinner-table. As 
the minister in the Commons who had taken 
part in the fewest divisions, he had made good 
his claim to the same distinction as tradition 
awards to the mathematician whose name closes 
the list of the Cambridge Wranglers. After 
dinner Lord Derby, more than ever delighted 
with his own humorous vein, proposed the health 
of " Sir John Pakington and the Wooden Spoons 
of Old England." 

244 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby 

Bulwer-Lytton did but write the exact truth 
when he wrote in the " New Timon " :— 

Nor age nor gout his freshness can destroy, 
And time still leaves all Eton in the boy. 

A little later, after a concert at Buckingham' 
Palace, " the Rupert of Debate " saw Lord John 
Russell talking with his own Foreign Secretary, 
Lord Malmesbury, and Lady Malmesbury. 
" You have got," he said, " Lord John, into very 
bad comipany ; and, while I thmk about it, you 
ought to be wearing full dress and not lev6e 
'uniform." " I know it," came the rejoinder, 
" and the porter wanted to turn me out." "Did 
he? " exclaimed Derby. " Thou canst not say, / 
did it." 

About the samfe time there went about another 
Derby anecdote, also, if I mistake not, told con- 
cerning Lord Salisbury. The ultra-Whig Clerk 
of the Council, Charles Greville, to mark his 
detestation of the Conservatives, made, whenever 
he could, his colleague, William' Bathurst, attend 
in his place. The mention of this to the Earl 
drew forth, " It can signify nothing to me what 
footman brings up the coal-scuttle when I ring 
the bell ! " 

Two years later than this, as an OxfoM 
undergraduate, I renewed whatever of personal 

24s 



Great Victorians 

acquaintance it might be said I had with the great 
man. At the commemoration of 1863, as Chan- 
cellor of the University, he had delivered in the 
morning an address of welcome to the Princess 
of Wales, who had come there with her husband, 
the future Edward VII. It was composed in the 
most smoothly, and in part musically, flowing 
Latin, full of point in every sentence, with every 
personal touch a transcript from life. A very 
graceful description of the Royal lady, then in the 
bloom of her early loveliness, was followed by 
a sentence of two words, " Ipsa adest,'' repeated 
more than once with all the melody of a refrain. 
In the evening, at a reception given by the head 
of my college, in a recess of the drawing-room 
I reproduced, for the benefit of a friend who had 
not been in the Sheldohian, a good deal of the 
beautiful oration. Presently, looking round, 
whom should I see but the orator himself, who 
could not fail to have heard a good deal of what 
I had been saying. He was with Lord Carnar- 
von, then High Steward of the University. The 
latter made a movement as if about to present 
me to the great man. " Oh," said the Chan- 
cellor, " I know Mr. Escott already, from my 
old friend Trehawke Kekewich." Then, turning 
to me, he added, " Your memory of what I said 

this morning seems uncommonly good." Not 

246 



Sir Robert the Third to Lord Derby- 
till many years afterwards did I again hear that 
voice, which, like Mr. Gladstone's, never quite 
lost its rich Lancashire burr. The Duke of 
Argyll had delivered an elaborately bitter tirade 
against the then Leader of the Opiposition, who 
surprised the chamber by entirely ignoring the 
attack. " If," he said before the debate closed, 
" your lor'dships wish to know why I do not return 
the noble Duke's invective, I will give my reason 
in a little anecdote. The other day, walking near 
my house in the country by the waterside, I saw 
a little vixen of a woman belabouring a great, 
hulking bargee, her husband, with blows. When 
I asked the man how he took it all so quietly, he 
said, 'Well, my lord, you see, it's like this. It 
amuses her and it don't hurt me.' That explains 
my silent resignation under all the noble Duke's 
abuse." 



?47 



CHAPTER VII 

THE POLITICAL ADVENTURES OF THE HOUSE 
OF STANLEY AND OTHERS 

Sir John, the mediaeval founder of the family — Contrast between 
the fourteenth and fifteenth Earls — Lord Stanley's uses at 
the Foreign Office and in Fleet Street — How a man of letters 
became a Consul — The Stanley Civil Service Committee — 
Enter an Ambassador with his dispatch boxes — Lord Lyons 
on himself and others — How Lord Granville worked, and 
how Bismarck disappeared — Granville at the Foreign Office 
in fact and fiction — How the work was really done — Sir 
Charles Trevelyan's wrinkle and its results — How Foreign 
Secretaries leave their mark — The confessions of a many- 
cousined minister — What the second Lord Granville owed 
to his mother — " Enchantie de vous voir, madame, tnvitie ou 
non tnvitie." 

The Stanleys are associated with the making of 
Lancashire ; Lancashire returned the compliment 
by making the Stanleys. The family^ originally 
known as Audley, from its twelfth-century Cum- 
berland founder, derived its present name from its 
earliest landed property, Stanleigh, Staffordshire, 
and remained in a very modest position till, be- 
tween 1377 and 1399; i^s head', Sir John Stanley, 
a Macclesfield trader, was appointed Lord Deputy 

248 



The House of Stanley and Others 

of Ireland by Richard II, with extensive grants 
of land on the other side of St. George's Channel 
then, and 170,000 acres in the Isle of Man after- 
wards. A marriage with Isabella, heiress of the 
Lathoms, brought an increase of wealth and in- 
fluence. Knowsley Park, between nine and ten 
miles in circumference, came by this marriage to 
Sir John Stanley, who afterwards fortified the 
old house in its midst, where his descendants 
lived till 1 8 19. Thus began the family's lucra- 
tive connection with Cottonopolis on the Mersey. 
Its developwnfent resulted in their local supremacy, 
and paved the way to immense wealth by en- 
abling them to exact practically unlimited sums 
out of the profits or earnings of the mills, ware- 
houses, and docks constructed by the representa- 
tives of commerce and trade. 

The Stanleys, therefore, achieved wealth and 
power less from their own territorial possessions 
than from the industrial and commercial enter- 
prise of their humbler neighbours and depend- 
ents . 

Sic fortis Etruria crevit, 
Scilicet et facta est rerum pulcherrima Roma. 

Such, also, Was the rise of the Peels, the Philipses, 
the Chethams, and the Arkwrights. This pro- 
gress reacted morally on the Stanleys themselves, 

249 



Great Victorians 

They now, in one generation after another, com- 
bined the taste and prowess of country gentlemen 
with growing aptitude for mercantile affairs. 
Whether on the Turf or where the professional 
capitalists on the Mersey " most do congregate," 
the great Earl, who had only one senior in the 
Peerage, Lord Shrewsbury, showed himself a 
first-rate man of business, aad, notwithstanding 
his innate feudalism, never in practice set himself 
against modern ideas. i The Spectator in its 
Townsendian and Huttonian period used to com- 
pare the fifteenth Earl of Derby's mind to a 
series of condensing chambers. From that point 
of view he stands out from the family's ranks as 
not less a type of his own time than was his 
father of an earlier and diametrically different 
dispensation . 

The fourteenth Earl complained to an intimate 
friend, the late Colonel Napier Sturt, of his son 
and heir's disloyal indifference to the august 
family traditions. Nothing could be more un- 
just. Whatever the party label of any among 

^ The already mentioned boast of belonging to the pre-scientific 
era was mere rhetoric. As Chancellor of the University "the 
Rupert of Debate " did all he could to encourage natural science 
as an examination subject in the Oxford schools ; while the 
notion of a theology " school " originated in germ with him, 
though the influence of Dr. J. R. Magrath chiefly brought 
\% to practical maturity. 

250 



The House of Stanley and Others 

their representatives to-day, the Great Revolu- 
tion families were almost, if not quite, without 
exception Whig. So, of course, was " Rupert " 
himself, till the " upsetting of the coach " in 
1834 saw him scramble out of the ruins on the 
Tory side, and raised him to the Tory leadership. 
This was in exact keeping with the ancestral pre- 
cedent of quick change set by the famous Stanley 
who veered from Yorkist to Lancastrian, thence 
to Yorkist again and neutral, till he married the 
Countess of Richmond, Henry Tudor's mother, 
and so closed this chapter of adventure by de- 
serting his lord and sovereign, Richard III, 
in the middle of Boswt)rth fight, and afterwards 
placing the defeated and dead King's crown on 
his stepson, Henry VII. The fifteenth Earl, in 
truth, exactly followed the paternal footsteps by 
beginning under his father at the ForeigQ OflSce, 
becoming the first Secretary of State for India 
afterwards, by separating himself from his old 
friends in 1878, by definitely joining their oppo- 
nents two years later, and by serving in Mr. 
Gladstone's Cabinet till the Hom'e Rule convul- 
sions of 1886. When Lord Stanley in 1857 
he had rendered his father real service in a deli- 
cate matter much talked about at the time, but 
soon afterwards forgotten. The fourteenth Earl 
systematically snubbed the political Press, Coi;-' 

35? 



Great Victorians 

servative as well as Liberal. At that time the 
Standard had not become a penny paper and a 
Conservative organ. The journal issued from 
the same office at the price of threepence, and 
always ready to support its friends in return for 
early information, was the Morning Herald. 
" If," urged the then Lord Stanley, " you do 
not humour this broadsheet you will find it your 
enemy, just as, a moment after, you may use it 
for your good." Eventually Lord Stanley saw 
the Herald managers, admitted that the editor 
might not be without cause for complaining he 
had been kept out of news from Downing Street, 
and promised him some measure of official con- 
fidence in the future. The paper, therefore, 
which had gone to great expense in developing 
some new popular features, continued to support 
the party. For the time, therefore, the great Earl 
spoke rather less slightingly of his son. He had 
never underrated his brains, though he found in 
their quality nothing congenial to himself. He 
now publicly recognized his heir's statesmanship 
by making him Foreign Secretary in his own 
Cabinet of 1866-8, and by bequeathing him in 
that capacity to Disraeli. The fourteenth Earl 
outlived his son's first tenure of that office, and 
spoke on the various subjects, chiefly of Central 
Asian policy, then occupying the department, 

352 



The House of Stanley and Others 

It was during this period that a sporting friend 
and parliamentary supporter of the Prime 
Minister, the then Colonel Napier Sturt, Lord 
Alington's brother, by way of telling his chief 
what he knew would amuse him, said to him, 
" I really think I saw Stanley last night in very 
pleasant company at Cremorne." " I only wish 
to goodness," returned the fond father, " you had 
done so." As a fact, the then Lord Stanley, 
afterwards the fifteenth Earl, was no more likely 
to have been at Cremorne than when in Paris on 
official business to have danced the can-can at 
Mabille. The little dialogue, as authentic as it is 
slight, may serve to hint the difference between 
the two best known of the nineteenth -century 
Derby earls. A little incident, in which I took 
some part^ showed that, as head of the Ministry, 
1866-8, Lord Derby had no more idea of inter- 
fering with his son's department than of allowing 
himself to be overruled in any administra.tive 
detail even by so indispensable a lieutenant in 
the House of Commons as Disraeli. A very old 
and gifted friend of mine, a first-rate classical 
scholar and accomplished writer, wanted to get 
a Consulship which had just fallen vacant. Not 
being in London, by way of saving time he tele- 
graphed me the request to approach the Prime 
Minister for him if I could> and remind that 

253 



Great Victorians 

potentate of his past services for the party with 
his pen, of his family's connection with Lanca- 
shire, and close associations at various times with 
the house of Knowsley. " I will," the Prime 
Minister assured me, " do what I can, and support 
you at the Foreign Office with my son, the Secre- 
tary of State." To him I went with a letter from 
the Prime Minister. On my way I heard that 
another candidate for the place was backed by 
Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. I 
had, however, some reason for thinking that on 
" public form " my friend had a better chance 
than, notwithstanding his Disraelian backing, his 
most formidable competitor, and that the two 
members of the house of Stanley were disposed 
to resent anything that looked like an attempt, 
by whomsoever made, to influence their judg- 
ment. And so the event proved.. Eventually 
the actual Premier's influence prevailed, and the 
person in whom I was interested got the appoint- 
ment, though I heard in more than one quarter 
that he had not the ghost of a chance. 

Ten years later the fifteenth Lord Derby, as 
private member and afterwards as Foreign Secre- 
tary, perpetuated the Stanley influence in the 
Upper House, in the face of bitter personal 
attacks and a constant bombardment of malicious 

anecdotes. At that time the family house was 

254 



The House of Stanley and Others 

still in St. James's Square, and was constantly 
kept open for innumerable family friends and 
relatives ; its master, therefore, assured himself 
the quiet half-hour in the evening by walking 
across Pall Mall and sipping a glass of the famous 
port at the Travellers' Club. As a boy at Eton 
first and Rugby afterwards, his tongue had always 
seemed a little too large for his mouth, causing 
him to speak with a certain thickness. This I 
heard from his own doctor, while the late Sir 
Richard Quain circumstantially confirmed the 
story, entirely disposing, as it did, of the calum- 
nies raised on the foundation of Lord Derby's 
evening visits to his favourite house of call. As 
Lord Stanley he first made his mark on public 
life in the Palmerstonian period as chairman of 
the committee inquiring into the Civil Service 
system, anticipating, as that did, many of the 
reforms finally carried out under Lord Salisbury 
three or four years later. 

One instance of Lord Stanley's prescience in 
foreign affairs may be given. So early as 1867 
he believed war between France and Prussia to 
be inevitable if the Prussian garrison were not 
withdrawn from Luxemburg. That was done. 
For the time the danger disappeared. " I am 
not, however," said Lord Stanley, " sanguine of 
averting hostilities on another issue some time 

255 



Great Victorians 

later." When in 1870 the long-smbuldering 
embers burst forth into flame, Europe was taken 
by surprise. Lord Clarendon had been followed 
(June 27th) at the Foreign Office by Lord Gran- 
ville. The new minister, the day before he 
received the seals of office, was told by the very 
experienced Under-Secretary, Hammond, that ht 
never knew so great a lull in foreign affairs. 
Except the recent murder of British subjects 
by Greek brigands, he was not aware oi any 
particular question with which Lord Granville 
would have to deal. The minister, indeed, knew 
better. Earlier and more exact news from the 
coulisses of Europjean diplomacy, often through 
other than official channels, reached him' than 
flowed into the private room' of LoM Palmer - 
ston himself. During the eighties one of the 
most frequent and agreeable apparitions at 
country houses I might be visiting was Lord 
Lyons, with the inevitable Mr. George Sheffield 
in the carriage sent to fetch himi at the station, 
in a travelling cap that covered all his head, 
with part of his face, followed by a fly full of 
despatch boxes. I have recently seen it stated 
that both in his despatches and in Parliament 
Lord Granville signalized his instalment in the 
Foreign Office by an assurance that the world 

would continue at peace for somfe time to come. 

256 



The House of Stanley and Others 

" Lord Granville," said Lord Lyons, " never did 
anything of the kind. All that he wrote to my 
Embassy in Paris and said in Parliament breathed 
the spirit of apprehension and misgiving." No 
man, thought Lord Lyons, ever worked harder 
or more incessantly, night and day, at the busi- 
ness of peace-making. As Lord Granville said 
in private conversation, the position for himself 
and his Government was very much that of a 
man trying to prevent a fire with inflammable 
materials all around him. Every one had his 
hand full of matches ready to ignite. Therefore, 
he insisted, it was not the moment to elaborate 
inquiries as to who brought the materials, but 
to remove them, and so avert the greatest of 
calamities. Another thing, went on Lord Lyons, 
in which Lord Granville was perfectly right was 
that Napoleon III wished for peace, that the 
Empress was warlike, and that the decisive steps 
finally making peace impossible were those taken 
by General Lebceuf. 

Some years later I had frequent opportuni- 
ties of seeing Lord Granville. The general im- 
pression left by his talk and manner was that he 
had no love for the Prussians, and that he would 
willingly make the best of the French, always 
excepting the Due de Gramont ; for him, Lord 
Granville's antipathy could only be compared to 

257 R 



Great Victorians 

the mutual dislike of the fifteenth Lord Derby 
and the Due Decazes during the year of the Suez 
Canal shares purchase. " Have you," I once 
ventured to ask Loid Granville, " had any direct 
dealings with or ever met Prince Bismarck?" 
"Not exactly," came the answer. " When in 
attendance on the Queen I was once in a garden 
with him at Baden. Suddenly there rang out 
through the air the word ' Sharp ! ' meaning that 
the Queen would appear on the scene in a few 
minutes. It was not lost upon the 'man of 
blood and iron,' who suddenly disappeared, 
plunging, as it seemed, into a shrubbery, and 
was then lost sight of, never again to be seen 
by me." 

Among Foreign Secretaries none can have sur- 
passed Lord Granville in the faculty of isolating 
himself amid company from all sounds and per- 
sons around him, and working at his papers even 
in the conversation -roomi of a foreign hotel. No 
one ever worked so hard with so little appearance 
of effort. This and a certain epicureanism of 
bearing som'etimes gave the idea of dalliance 
with, rather than active performance of, his 
employments. One used to hear the very 
absurd story of his postponing the signature 
of some treaty or other equally important 

paper till at last he was hunted down by the 

258 



The House of Stanley and Others 

foreign attach^ as he was entering his 
brougham to go out to dinner. Pen and ink- 
were quickly forthcoming, and so at last the 
business was dispatched. The truth, however, 
is this. A continental diplomatist stationed in 
London had for some time been importuning the 
Secretary of State with inconvenient questions. 
As long as possible Lord Granville kept out of 
his way, but was finally pounced upon by him 
just as the carriage was starting on the homeward 
drive from Downing Street. 

Comparing him with other Foreign Ministers 
or their Cabinet colleagues of my time, Lord 
Granville in his own fashion and in his own hours 
was a remarkably hard worker, never, as he once 
put it to me, intimidated by detail, and always 
recognizing that to grasp principles one must 
surmount an infinite amount of drudgery. He 
did not keep his secretaries so late at work in 
Downing Street as was done by Lord Palmerston. 
Like Palmerston, however, he took work, though 
in greater quantity, home with him. If he did not 
stay up so late at night with it, that was largely 
because, early in his course, he acted on a sugges- 
tion of his friend Sir Charles Trevelyan. That 
most strenuous and least self -sparing of officials 
never looked at a paper after beginning to feel 

fatigued over-night. However early, he went to 

259 



Great Victorians 

bed, and in a very short time to sleep. Shortly 
after midnight, or "in the small hours beyond 
twelve," he would wake with clear head, rein- 
vigorated brain, and hungry for his uncompleted 
task ; the materials for that were at his bedside. 
With these he occupied himself till all was done, 
only a little later than he might have been return- 
ing from an evening party. " I tried the idea," 
was Lord Granville's comment, " directly Sir 
Charles gave it to me. Whatever good work I 
may have done, I think this in great measure to 
be the secret of it." Every department of State 
had, from Lord Granville's point of view, its 
domestic idiosyncrasies. These, he thought, 
should be stamped upon its official arrangements 
down to the smallest detail. Herein he resembled 
Palmerston, who, on going to the Home Office in 
1852, insisted on the despatches being folded 
differently from the Foreign Office fashion. So 
Lord Granville, migrating to the Privy Council 
Office in 1853, introduced an entirely new ribbon 
for tying up papers. 

" The most exercising time," the present writer 
once heard Lord Granville say, " I ever went 
through was in Lord Aberdeen's Coalition Cabi- 
net, where I only resigned the Presidentship of 
the Council in 1854. Since Pulteney with the 
help of Swift J in the seventeenth and eighteenth 

260 



The House of Stanley and Others 

centuries, rallied the Opposition by organizing 
its journalism, so many public men had never 
actively mixed themselves up with newspapers 
before. Disraeli had his organ in the Conser- 
vative Press. Lord Palmerston inspired, and 
often practically wrote, leading articles in the 
Morning Post. The Star had become the 
favourite medium of John Bright, the Manchester 
School, and extreme Radicalism generally. I 
myself was accused of being in close personal 
alliance with Delane and The Times. The Duke 
of Newcastle, when Colonial Secretary, in the 
kindest, friendliest, but most pointed manner, 
put me on my guard against identifying myself 
or my colleagues with the opinions and policy of 
the great newspaper. Delane and Reeve fre- 
quently dined with me in Bruton Street. Charles 
Greville was in constant intercourse with and in 
the close confidence of both. Social civilities 
seemed to be the best mode of admitting to com- 
munity of interest, as well as intercourse with the 
higher classes and the public men, those whose 
pen can exercise such enormous influence for 
good or bad. As to Printing House Square/' 
continued Lord Granville, " during my time at the 
Foreign Office I never gave effect to the direct 
and indirect overtures made to me from The 
Times, nor did I ever, directly or indirectly, 

361 



Great Victorians 

give information to any writer in The Times. ^ 
Five years before the beginning of Delane's timte, 
Disraeli's lifelong friendship with the newspaper 
had been secured by the publication of his 
*' Runnymede Letters " during Barnes' editorship 
in 1836. The conductor of the famous broad- 
sheet in the second half of the Victorian Age 
sometimes came up in the social conversations 
in which the Conservative leader and the Whig 
Earl exchanged opinions on men and things. 
" What," once asked Lord Beaconsfield, " do you 
really think of Delane?" " I think," came the 
answer, " I would sooner wait till Delane is dead 
before I say." 

Under Delane, as to a greatly diminished extent 
under his successors, and even occasionally in the 
existing dispensation, whoever was out, and who- 
ever was in, all foreigners persistently invested 
The Times utterances with something of an official 
and inspired character. So, too, as regards Lord 
Granville and the department which he first began 
to control in the December of 1 8 5 i . Whoever 

' Lord Fitzmaurice's two volumes are not merely a masterpiece 
of faithful biography but a survey from behind the scenes of the 
chief events happening in the period recorded and of the men 
who helped to make them. They also contain, vol. i. p. 91, 
further details than those given above in Lord Granville's own 
words of the personal relations between Bruton Street and 
Blackfriars. 

263 



The House of Stanley and Others 

at a later date the Liberal Foreign Minister might 
be, the other side regarded Granville as per- 
sonifying the foreign policy views of responsible 
Liberalism. Even when a Conservative Premier 
had his own Foreign Minister, like Lord Derby in 
1852, he went to Lord Granville rather than Lord 
Malmesbury for advice at a critical moment. The 
new Emperor was supposed to be bent on con- 
fiscating the Orleans property. That purpose, 
rather than the other iniquities of the Imperial 
regime, chiefly embittered Printing House Square 
against the nascent Empire. Napoleon did not 
conceal his extreme annoyance at the language of 
The Tintes. In England both parties saw the 
danger of such abuse in such a quarter goading 
the Emperor to acts of violence. Lord Granville 
so far complied with the wishes of his Conserva- 
tive successor at the Foreign Office as to express 
a hope to the great editor that, without any actual 
sacrifice, he would lay down his policy with rather 
less asperity of tone. In those days Englishmen 
of all classes were much divided about the coming 
Napoleon III and his doings. His chief sup- 
porters met at Mrs. Mount joy Martin's house, 
his chief social headquarters during his London 
exile, frequented during the early fifties and long 
afterwards by believers in the Napoleonic legend, 
then in favour iMth lecclesiastical as well as secular 

263 



Great Victorians 

circles. For the High Church people, brought 
into ascendancy by the Oxford Tractarian Move- 
ment, were alarmed by the menaces of the 1848 
Revolution to Church as well as State. Monta- 
lembert,! a great figure at the Mount joy Martin 
gatherings, then Napoleon's chief adherent, per- 
suaded a good many that the new Empire would 
mean not only the Papal restoration, but war 
against infidelity and a religious revival all round. 
During the nineteenth century's first half the 
new Bonapartism had another English exponent 
and champion in one of the least known but most 
remarkable men of his time, a retired lawyer who 
lived at Torquay, whom as a boy I had often seen 
there, who was intimate with Disraeli, the two 
Bulwers, the novelist and the diplomatist, and in 
request with a far wider circle because of his skill 
in healing family feuds and getting young men 
out of scrapes .2 The two formerly most active 
of Napoleon Ill's supporters in general society 
were Sir Arthur Otway and Sir H. Drummond 
Wolff. Both these had seen him enter Paris as 

^ Montalembert continued to support Napoleon III till his 
confiscation of the Orleans property. He then became the 
Empire's bitterest opponent, and remained so till his death, in 
1870. 

' I leave this paragon anonymous because, though I heard 
him spoken of as Mr. Stuart, I was told this was not his real 
name, and that he had formerly been better known by another. 

264 



The House of Stanley and Others 

President of the Republic ; while Drummond 
Wolff, when Lord Malmesbury's private secre- 
tary, had negotiated with him' several State 
matters. The best men of letters at the time, 
A. W. Kinglake, Hayward, and Henry Reeve, 
were all strong Orleanists, and formed a little 
set, extending across the Straits of Dover, with 
Adolphe Thiers as its chief representative in 
Paris. 

Lord Granville's acquaintance of every kind 
in the Pare Monceau as well as the Faubourg 
St. Germain fitted him, as far as was possible, to 
play the social mediator between Orleanist and 
Bonapartist. The happiness of the vein in which 
he could do this may be judged from his treat- 
ment, about the same time, in the House of Lords 
of Lord Ellenborough's taunt that the Palmerston 
Cabinet was nothing more than a family party. 

*' My lords," he said, " I must make a clean 
breast of it at once. Some of those who went 
before me had such quivers full of daughters who 
did not die old maids that I have relations upon 
this side of the House, relations upon the other, 
and that I had the unparalleled misfortune to 
have several in the last Protectionist Administra- 
tion." All his arts of personal popularity and 
opportunities of social charm were used to con- 
solidate the old acres into social unity that should 

265 



Great Victorians 

prove as much to the real interest of the classes 
as of the masses. That object, never lost 
sight of, came out still more strongly towards the 
end of the sixties in connection with the Jews . In 
1868 the Carlton Club sent down as its candidate 
for the seat at Sandwich a Jew, the future Baron 
Henry de Worms. About the same time Lord 
Shaftesbury pressed on Mr. Gladstone Sir Moses 
Montefiore's claim to a peerage, and the Prince 
of Wales complained to Lord Granville himself 
about the defective representation in the Upp-er 
House of new types of experience and minds. 
Nothing was more important, Lord Granville 
agreed with the Heir -apparent, than the attach- 
ment to the aristocracy of the Hebrew wealth, 
culture, cosmopolitanism, and power— and if to 
his own political divisions of that caste, so much 
the better. 

My own visits to Lord Granville were chiefly 
at his London house. Once or twice, however 
during his wardenship of the Cinque Ports, I 
visited him at Walmer Castle . Here the company 
was widely representative. The social mixture 
seemed to delight no one more than the Lord 
Warden. " In these matters," he said to me, 
" I owe a great deal to both my parents, for 
when at the Paris Embassy my father liked to 
see ' all sorts and conditions of men.' My mother 

?66 



The House of Stanley and Others 

was a perfect hostess, and was never disconcerted 
by the occasional presence of a stranger she did 
not know by sight and had never asked, her wel- 
come in such cases always being, ' Enchantee de 
voas voir, madame, invitee ou non invitee,' " In 
an earlier chapter the scion of an old Whig line 
was seen as the successful champion of a Hebrew 
claim to a seat at St. Stephen's, and later was, 
with some interruptions, for twelve years col- 
league in the representation of London of the 
first Jew Member, Baron Lionel de Rothschild. 
Ten years later the other descendant of a Whig 
house now recalled was to promote the logical 
completion of that movement by urging upon 
the Prime Minister of the day the practical reason 
for converting the German barony into an English 
peerage . 



367 



CHAPTER VIII 
FROM ST. MARY'S, WINTON, TO CURZON STREET 

At Winchester — Old Trollope, young TroUope, and " Bob " 
Lowe — Tait is fined a pound at the meeting of the Debating 
Society — Robert Lowe as Member for Kidderminster — 
His article, " The Past Session and the New Parliament,' 
in the Edinburgh Review — Lord John Russell's wrath at 
Lowe, whom he regarded as the devil is said to look upon 
holy water — His Trojan horse similes — An albino — "The 
next thing a nigger with his banjo and bones " — " Vers 
de sociitS" — Lowe and Canning's despatch to Lord Minto — 
Lord Lyons' letter from the British Embassy at Paris — 
What Lowe owed to Disraeli — His wrath at the result of 
the Abyssinian War — His rapidity of utterance but not 
of reading — Disraeli on Mrs. Lowe — Mr. Gladstone as a 

raconteur and on " the big, big d " — A pupil, 

together with Henry Edward Manning, of Bishop Words- 
worth — Lord Goschen's opinion of Gladstone — Remarks 
about the Oriel common-room — At Lady Strangford's — 
Lord and Lady Aberdeen's guest at Dollis Hill — The 
G.O.M. wins the race to the tea-table — His kindness 
to the outcast woman — Disraeli's disHke of Thackeray 
on account of his burlesque " Codlingsby " — He finds 
Dickens a " delightful man " at the Stanhope dinner — 
The trio, " Popanilla," " Piccadilly," and the " New 
RepubUc " (Mr. W. H. Mallock) — His aphorisms re- 
produced by Mrs. Reynolds — " No one is quite well, but 
268 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

I am tolerably well" — His advice to the two little boys — 
Lady Chesterfield — Her sister Lady Anson's retort — His 
gratitude to his wife — At the hotel in Bournemouth — His 
last words, "I am oppressed." 

Others than those already recalled were num- 
bered among the survivors to my time of the 
men who had places in the Coalition Ministry 
(1852-5) and Lord Palmerston's first Govern- 
ment, which came afterwards. In consequence 
of family Wykehamist associations, Robert Lowe 
had been a familiar name to me from my child- 
hood. At the Winchester of my father's and 
other near relatives' time the cry as of a small 
boy in great pain would sometimes be heard ; 
that, it generally turned out, was only Tom Trol- 
lope thrashing his younger brother (Anthony the 
novelist). Presently came a cry still more pitiful 
and piercing . " Oh," it used to be said, " that must 
be Lowe thrashing both of them." ' As fellow 
and tutor of " University," Lowe passed for the 
best classical coach as well as one of the best 
scholars in the Oxford of his day. Several of 
my people, belonging to my father's generation, 
had been his pupils, and recited to me long 
passages from the Gr^co -Latin commemorations 

I So ran the story, which, it must be said, is open to 
doubt. For both the TroUopes were collegers ; the future Lord 
Sherbrooke was a commoner, and the two classes of boys did 
not see much of each other. 

269 



Great Victorians 

(like the " Uniomachia " ) of his encounter with 

other members of the Debating Society, then, 

of course, a much smaller affair than it soon 

afterwards became. In this way I heard how 

Lowe as chairman ruled the meeting with a rod 

of iron, how, when Tait interrupted somebody's 

speech, the future Primate was fined by him a 

pound, and threatened with a further mulct if 

he again insulted the " chair " by an appeal 

against its authority. 

Subsequently to his Oxford days he found a 

place among the most brilliant, as well as earliest, 

of those cited by Disraeli more than a generation 

afterwards as illustrating the unity of public life 

in distant parts of the British Empire : " To-day 

a man is Member for Sydney, finds a nugget or 

shears a thousand flocks, and becomes Member 

for London to-morrow." Having made a fortune 

at the Sydney Bar and a reputation in the Sydney 

Parliament, Lowe reappeared in England during 

1850. Very soon thereafter (in 1 8 5 2 ) he began 

his English parliamentary course as Member for 

Kidderminster, and twelve months afterwards his 

official apprenticeship under Lord Aberdeen as 

Secretary to the Board of Control. Neither then, 

nor under Palmerston as Vice-President of the 

Board of Trade, did he become well known to 

the public. 

270 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

During these years some one asked a friend 
in the Lower House, " Have you heard Lowe's 
speeches this session? " " Not exactly," was the 
reply ; " why should I ? I have read his articles 
in The Tiniest It was not his tongue but his 
pen that was first to fix general attention upon 
him in the spring of 1857. "The Past Session 
and the New Parliament " formed the title of 
the most sensational article in the spring number 
of the Edinburgh Review ; it constituted a 
vitriolic attack on Lord John Russell and Glad- 
stone for having resigned their places under 
Palmerston in 1855. These men had acted 
treacherously by their colleagues and their party. 
They were therefore trounced in the old Whig 
" blue and yellow " with a severity which caused 
its proprietors to tremble in their shoes at the 
possible consequences to the fortunes of their 
periodical. The personal motive of the onslaught 
showed itself, they protested, in every paragraph. 
Lord John, however, had at once divined the 
authorship of the anonymous effusion, and was 
not easily appeased. He regarded Lowe much 
as the devil is said to look upon holy water, and 
would be content with nothing less than that the 
demand for a second edition of the number, 
caused by this " success of scandal," should be 
refused. 

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Great Victorians 

As a House of Commons debater and orator, 
the man who died Lord Sherbrooke first won 
universal notoriety during the debates of 1866 
for his attacks on the Russell -Gladstone Reform 
Bill, for his hard and long-worked Trojan horse 
similes, and for one or two highly classical, terse, 
and pungent denunciations of democracy. " What 
like," as the Scotch say, " was the man who in 
his fifty-fifth year, just midway through the 
Victorian Age^ had so unprecedentedly excited the 
admiration of many, the detestation of some, and 
the attention of all?" His hair was perfectly 
white, but, like the prisoner of Chillon, " not 
with age " ; his eyebrows and lashes were of 
the same hue. His little deep-set eyes were pink. 
He was, in fact, an albino. " Bless my soul ! " 
said one of the present writer's mentors, an old 
county Member, who often introduced me under 
the gallery, " I wonder what we are coming 
to. We have just got ^vhat they call an Albanian. 
The next thing we shall have, I suppose, is a 
nigger with his banjo and bones ! " A trifle 
above rather than below the middle height, " the 
Albanian " had a strong, clear, well -managed 
voice, penetrating every corner of the assembly, a 
defiant manner, a fair command of his temper, 
but a visible intolerance of any approach to con- 
tradiction or opposition. 

272 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

These characteristics belonged to an individual 
who combined in himself at least two or three 
distinct personalities. It was not that he had 
any thought of being " all things to all men," but 
simply that different people seemed to touch dif- 
ferent springs of his being. If to some he seemed 
rasping, repellent, contemptuous, that was because 
they went to the wrong partition of his identity. 
Had they approached him rightly, they would 
have found a kindly witted, genial companion, 
whose sparkling talk and ready turn for acrostic- 
spinning and charade-contriving brought the sun- 
shine of amusement into the dullest and darkest 
country houses. To put it differently, Mr. Lowe 
was a sort of social olive, to be thoroughly en- 
joyed only by social and intellectual palates that 
had undergone a thorough course of preparatory 
discipline. 

On one of the few occasions I found myself at 
the dinner-table with him he engaged me in con- 
versation and seemed to expect that I should 
say something. I had heard of his happy turn 
for the lighter kind of poetry, and therefore 
referred to one of Frederick Locker's composi- 
tions published in that morning's Times. I 
described them as vers de societe. His coun- 
tenance at once darkened and fell. What did 
I mean? The rhymes I referred to were not 

273 s 



Great Victorians 

what I called them'. They were occasional verses, 
and so on, and so on. Presently our host, Lord 
Carnarvon, as if to change the subject, asked me 
whether I had sent Lord Lyons, whom I had 
recently met at Highclere, some verses, my quota- 
tions from which had amused our then French 
Ambassador. "What were they?" some one 
asked. " A rhymed despatch from George Can- 
ning at the Foreign Office to Lord Minto at The 
Hague about a necklace." " Canning," said Lord 
Sherbrooke, as he had then become, " never 
wrote anything of the sort. It exists only in 
your own imagination." " It is at least," I said, 
with all proper meekness, " to he found in the 
two volumes of Hookham Frere's Remains ; for 
I copied them out from the book for that purpose 
before forwarding them to Lord Lyons a few 
days ago." " Before," rejoined his lordship, " I 
could accept that, I need some evidence of it." 
" That," I said, " happens to be in my pocket and 
is quite at your service." Remembering Lord 
Sherbrooke's eye troubles, I handed to our host 
to read aloud if he thought fit the little document 
which I have just mentioned, and which would 
show I was not intentionally deceiving my 
illustrious fellow -guest. This letter is before me 
now and runs as follows :— 



274 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

British Embassy, Paris, 
February 5, 1886. 
Dear Mr. Escott, 

I thank you heartily for so kindly recollecting my wish to 
see Canning's despatch in verse to Lord Minto. It has amused 
me much, as I have a liking for the somewhat formal pleasantries 
of the Canning and Hookham Frere period. When you next 
come to Paris I shall claim your promise to see me, and let me 
know all about that other versifier, Mortimer Collins, in the 
"British Birds," who wrote the drollery you introduced to me, 
beginning " There was an ape in the days that were earlier." 

Believe me, 

Yours very truly, 

Lyons. 

It is not to be supposed that in the little 
incident just recalled Lord Sherbrooke was 
influenced by any conscious animosity against 
myself. Of him, perhaps, as of others, it might 
be said that knowledge was his forte and omni- 
science his foible. What Lord Lyons called the 
little pleasantries of the eighteenth and early 
nineteenth centuries were considered by Lord 
Sherbrooke one of his lown specialities. He may 
therefore have resented my accidental acquaint- 
ance with something in this department of letters 
that he did not himself at once recall. The real 
explanation, however, must probably be found 
in the fact of his having been as contentious as 
he was gifted. He had a passion for contra- 
diction which in certain humours he could not 
restrain. That in his public life was the secret 

275 



Great Victorians 

of his almost lifelong duel with Disraeli. Two 
of a trade never agree. Both men had the 
same gift, nearly in the same degree, of con- 
densing malicious sentiment into epigrammatic 
form. 

At the time of the Abyssinian War, during 
Disraeli's first Premiership (1868), Lowe's dis- 
plays of petulance against the minister he hated 
were ill-mannered rather than effective. Disraeli 
took them very quietly — indeed, laughed them off 
in the old Palmerstonian manner. "The Member 
for London University," he said, " were he 
capable of gratitude, would remember that my 
Reform Bill created his constituency, and that 
but for me he would not to-day have a seat here." 
Lowe had predicted every kind of failure and 
calamity as sure to result from the expedition 
to Magdala. As Disraeli, in his happiest vein, 
put it, he had discovered a certain African fly 
which would decimate the British forces. The 
right honourable gentleman, in fact, was as vitu- 
perative of the insects of Abyssinia as if they 
had been British workmen. Cassandra, however, 
turned out an untrue prophetess, and before the 
close of April 1868 the Prime Minister could not 
only exult over his falsified foe, but moved a 
vote of thanks to Sir Robert Napier, the trium- 
phantly successful General who had overcome 

276 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

indescribable difficulties, had transported the 
artillery of Europe on the elephants of Asia across 
the deserts and the precipices of Africa, and had 
planted the standard of St. George on the moun- 
tains of Rasselas. How during this discussion Mr. 
Lowe could not prevent his wrath an^ disgust from 
showing themselves in the expression of his face 
and the movements of his body was described 
at the time by all the picturesque reporters of 
the day. 

Disraeli's crowning triumph over his fallen foe 
came a year or two later. Speaking on the Royal 
Titles Bill, Lowe had stated as a fact of which 
he had personal knowledge that Queen Victoria 
in the near past had more than once wished her 
Government to confer upon her the Imperial style, 
and till Mr. Disraeli, he continued, all the 
ministers thus applied to had refused. At the 
moment Disraeli said nothing. A few days later, 
however, he stated that the allegation was too 
serious to pass by in silence, and he had there- 
fore humbly requested his Sovereign to tell him 
whether there was anything in the story. He 
now had the honour of informing the House that 
from beginning to end it was pure fiction. 

After this the future Lord Sherbrooke desisted 

from public provocations of the man who, on the 

balance, had so much the best of the encounters. 

277 



Great Victorians 

His private depreciation of his enemy continued, 
and was expressed as bitterly as usual at Mr. 
Jowett's Balliol dinner-table ; some rhetorical 
ability formed on that occasion the one merit 
allowed by the censor. No English more pure 
or better balanced was ever heard in the House 
of Commons than that of Robert Lowe at his best. 
It was the true Oxford diction, the English of 
Jowett, of Newman, of Matthew Arnold, and 
Froude . 

Most of his important speeches in the Commons 
were listened to by the present writer. They 
were marked by the same logical sequence of pure 
thought, of varied, mostly first-hand, knowledge, 
and occasional metaphor, focused upon the suc- 
cessive divisions of his address. Yet if action be 
the first, second, and third thing in oratory, 
Robert Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke, was not an 
orator. He used no gesture, standing, in every 
part of his body, motionless as a statue. My 
relative Charles Wordsworth, Bishop of St. 
Andrew's, Headmaster of Harrow in 1836, knew 
from his successors the school tradition of Sir 
Robert Peel, steadily standing- 
Reading rapidly, all at ease, 
Pages out of Demosthenes.* 



^ Mr. Bowen's Harrow Songs. 
278 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

The Bishop had gone with me one day on a visit 
to St. Stephen's. Watching Lowe, he could not 
but be, he said, reminded of him by the then 
Chancellor of the Exchequer's rapidity of utter- 
ance and automaton-like lack of animation. 
Every physical aid Ito loratory was eschewed . The 
whole performance impressed every one who wit- 
nessed it as a purely intellectual effort, splendidly 
executed by one whose chief anxiety appeared to 
be that it seemed he should not see his audience. 
" Seem " I write purposely, because no one could 
exactly tell who or what, whether in public or 
private, were within the range of Lord Sher- 
brooke's vision. He never, it is certain, read 
anything " rapidly all at ease." One of the 
parlourmaid's or lady's-maid's duties beneath the 
Lowe roof in Lowndes Square, or at " Warling- 
ham," in the Surrey hills, was to read aloud to the 
master. On occasion she may have become his 
amanuensis for his Times leaders. These, how- 
ever, were generally, if not always, dictated to 
his devoted wife, who had every personal recom- 
mendation except that of beauty. This deficiency 
did not diminish her husband's affection, and 
caused one of Disraeli's wickedest jokes. "De- 
lightful," said some one, " to notice Lowe's fond- 
ness for his very plain wife." " Yes," came the 
rejoinder, " but then, he can never see her, and 
perhaps never did see her at all." 

279 



Great Victorians 

Appreciation of Lord Sherbrooke's unique per- 
sonal flavour and social gifts belonged, as has 
been said, to a limited set. He was, however, 
less unpopular than his colleagues. The droop- 
ing shoulders, crowned by the white head, of 
the rider of the old white cob in Rotten Row or 
in the Surrey lanes had becomie as much of an in- 
stitution as Thomas Carlyle on his " Rosinante " 
in the district separating Knightsbridge from 
Putney. The ministerial defeat on the Irish 
University Bill in the March of 1873 had for its 
sequel the outburst of strong antipathy against 
the defeated Government. For the first timei 
since 1728, the year in which Gay lampooned 
the Walpole Administration, the Cabinet of the 
day was held up to ridicule on the public stage. 

On March 5th, the day fixed for the Irish 
University Bill's second reading, " The Happy 
Land," at the Court Theatre, a burlesque of the 
Gilbertian fairy drama, " The Wicked World," 
filled the stalls of the little Chelsea playhouse. 
The Society audience laughed, as they had never 
laughed in the theatre before, at the presentations 
of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Ayrton, and the rest of the 
Cabinet as the chief characters in the skit. The 
Lord Chamlberlain's veto only increased its vogue. 
All who, like myself, saw the piece several times, 
were struck by the fact that, notwithstanding the 

280 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

storm over his match -tax, there were fewer 
demonstrations at the future Lord Sherbrooke's 
expense than in the case of any of the other 
caricatures . 

Their scholarship, learning, and University 
associations excepted, Mr. Lowe had as little in 
common with Mr. Gladstone as, years afterwards, 
Mr. Gladstone himself with Mr. Chamberlain. 
Both men, in truth, were only known and 
thoroughly at their ease within the narrow limits 
of a coterie of their own. It would have been 
as impossible to reduce the two to a common 
social denominator as to harmonize the yellow - 
backed novel with the Greek Fathers or the 
writings of Samuel Butler with Palais Royal 
opera bouffe. The most powerful legislative in- 
strument of his time, Mr. Gladstone never greatly 
enlarged his personal following beyond an occa- 
sional recruit of high distinction like Henry 
Drummond, who wrote " Natural Law in the 
Spiritual World," and who delivered lay sermons 
to a fashionable company on Sunday afternoons 
at Grosvenor House. I have heard people call 
the Gladstonian hospitalities, whether at Downing 
Street or Hawarden, formal and stiff. They were 
really as pleasant as could be expiected ; and at 
his London dinner -table the host, if at his best, 
delighted all. He had one of his most regular 

281 



Great Victorians 

guests in the memorable O 'Gorman, whose con- 
versations about the social Ireland of other days 
resembled a new chapter in " Sir Jonah Barring- 
ton." Mr. Gladstone himself illustrated in an 
occasional anecdote some of the differences be- 
tween the social talk of the present and the past. 
" Certainly," said Dr. Magee, then Bishop of 
Peterborough, " men have largely dropped the 
habit of swearing." Here some one suggested 
that Colonel Napier Sturt, who had been at St. 
Stephen's with Gladstone, might be considered 
an exception. " I mean," said the host, " that at 
Cabinet meetings and on other such occasions 
swearing has practically gone out. The Duke 
of Cumberland within my recollection was very 
anxious to stimulate Archbishop Rowley's opposi- 
tion to a proposal for abolishing Church rates. 
Now Howley was the meekest of men, and as 
circumspect in his speech as a Primate ought to 
be. The Duke of Cumberland hoped he would 
attend this particular meeting of peers. Not 
seeing him, he went out, presently returning quite 
radiant. ' My lords,' he broke out, ' it's all 
right. I've seen the Archbishop, and he says 

he'll be d d to all eternity if he doesn't oppose 

the Bill tooth and nail.' " 

" I wanted," Mr. Gladstone once told me, 
" after getting an All Souls' fellowship, to be 

282 



St. Mary's, WInton, to Curzon Street 

a clerg-yman." The already mentioned Bishop 
Wordsworth, when a student of Christ Church, 
had at the same time for his pupils Henry Edward 
Manning, of Baliiol, and William' Ewart Glad- 
stone, of the House. " Both," in his own words, 
" were visibly resolved on turning all their oppor- 
tunities to the best account. The future Cardinal 
deserved the highest honours afterwards gained 
by him in the classical schools ; the papers set on 
that occasion suited exactly, the result being that 
his first-class was one of the very best on record. 
He had not, however, the future Prime Minister's 
passionate energy for work of every kind, and 
would sometimes come to my rooms a good deal 
after the appointed hour . Gladstone, on the other 
hand, always came before it. When I entered 
I invariably found him busy writing down what 
turned out to be points in his books that he wished 
specially to discuss. No one could be more sur- 
prised than myself when I heard of his decision 
not to take Orders but to go into politics." 

As regards the career he actually adopted, the 
first Lord Goschen, after nearly twenty years' 
Cabinet experience of Gladstone as chief or 
colleague, said to me : " No man, in my opinion, 
ever more completely mistook his vocation. A 
born poet and a born religious, he was meant 
by nature to found Churches rather than 

283 



Great Victorians 

destroy them, and to exercise his Uterary gifts on 
the borderland separating theology from meta- 
physics and poetry." Certainly in whatever com- 
pany he moved (and the present writer saw him 
frequently among all sorts and conditions of men, 
and women too), Mr. Gladstone apparently never 
tried to divest himself of the hauteur that was the 
note of the aristocratic high Tory school, to which 
by birth and training he had belonged, nor of 
the donnishness that marked the ecclesiastics and 
the ecclesiastically minded laymen conspicuous 
in the Oxford Anglicans of the thirties. This 
was called the Oriel manner. When some one 
had ventured in a devout undertone to call the 
Oriel common-room of those days like heaven, 
an irreverent acquaintance observed, " Surely 
they can't be as bad upstairs as all that." 

The spiritual fervour of the man penetrated 
and kindled the Oxford crust, communicating its 
glow to those with whom he talked on such high 
subjects, and causing C. H. Spurgeon to say that 
no one could be long in his company without a 
consciousness of conversing with one who could 
" see the King in His beauty and behold the land 
that is very far off." i In general society, most 
to be appreciated, Gladstone should have been 
met at the late Lady Strangford's, in Chapel 

' Isa. xxxiii. 17. 
284 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

Street, Park Lane, exchanging views on Church 
or State with Lord Camoys, comparing notes 
on the smaller nationalities of the world with 
Lord Shaftesbury, or not shrinking from an occa- 
sional wit colnbat with his hostess, one of the very 
best talkers then living, quite unsurpassed in the 
knack of sumniing up well-known men and their 
work as well. A propos of A. H. Layard's 
Nineveh excavations she said in her softest tones : 
" With firmans from the Sultan and several pick- 
axes one is sure to find out a good deal." 

His most genial moods showed themselves to 
the best advantage as Lord and Lady Aberdeen's 
guest, both in Grosvenor Square and at Dollis 
Hill. At the latter I saw him, together with Sir 
Andrew Clark, for the last tim'e during the 
eighties. Lady Aberdeen, seated under a tree, 
was preparing refreshments for the school -chil- 
dren she was entertaining. As we walked up and 
down the gravel path the great man seemed to be 
getting restless. At last he turned round to the 
doctor, nearly of his own age, with the words, 
" Let us run a race to the tea-table." Off the 
patriarchs started, the G.O.M. winning by a short 
head. Mr. Gladstone's eagerness and Mrs. Glad- 
stone's devotion to good works brought them 
sometimes into strange companionships, and set 
many tongues idly wagging. The second Lord 

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Great Victorians 

Greville, when Gladstone's private secretary, was 
walking hom'e with him late one night when he 
lived in Harley Street ; not far from the house 
they were accosted by a poorly clad, hollow -faced 
outcast woman . " Come with me inside," said Mr. 
Gladstone, " and I will speak to you." As they 
entered the door the private secretary murmured, 
" What would Mrs. Gladstone say to this? " " I 
am," was the reply, " this moment going to fetch 
her." The lady came ; presently some hot soup 
made its appearance . Shortly af terwiards the poor 
wanderer of the streets, supplied with all neces- 
saries, was placed beneath a roof, with at least 
a chance of beginning a new life. 

The anecdotes about Gladstone's great rival, 
Disraeli, were more generally apocryphal than 
those in which the Liberal leader figured. Three 
men who at times lived more or less intimately 
with Disraeli survived into the twentieth century. 
Thomas H amber, once editor of the Standard, 
subsequently of the shortlived Hour, when 
broken in fortune and health found a retreat in 
the Hughenden neighbourhood. Here he was 
discovered and relieved by the lord of the manor. 
But after the death of his two private secretaries 
(Lord Barrington and Lord Rowton), Lord 
Glenesk, Lord Burnham, and Lord Ronald 
Sutherland Gower remained the only three who 

286 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

had possessed with him anything like long-stand- 
ing intimacy. In the obscm'ity of my extreme 
youth the fifth Lord Stanhope, the Maecenas as 
well as historian of the day, gave me the chance 
of meeting some famous men at his dinner -table, 
Disraeli among them. The latter had been told 
that Thackeray would be among his fellow- 
guests. " Then," was the reply, " I cannot 
come." Disraeli, as is well known, never forgave 
the author of " Vanity Fair " the Punch burlesque 
as " Codlingsby " of his first great novel. 
"Well," said Stanhope, "I will ask Dickens." 

Disraeli never became a votary of that novelist. 
His own colleague and Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, Sir Stafford Northcote, an ardent 
Dickensian, often tried, but always unsuccess- 
fully, to inoculate him with a taste for 
" Pickwick." At the Stanhope dinner, however, 
he found in Dickens the writer whom, many 
years earlier, he had met at Lady Blessington's 
and termed " a delightful man." 

The first place in Lord Beaconsfield's estimate 
of contemporary authors was always reserved for 
Matthew Arnold. Some words or ideas of the 
creator of Arminius, rather than anything he had 
ever heard from Sir Francis, afterwards Lord 
Leighton, formed the intellectual germ that even- 
tually grew into the Gaston Phoebus of " Lothair." 

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Great Victorians 

None of these writings when, many years later, I 
heard him talk on such subjects, seemed to in- 
terest him so much as Mr. W. H. Mallock's 
" New Republic." Our hostess, Mrs. Singleton, 
afterwards Lady Currie, had hoped on this occa- 
sion to present the author to the great man. 
Something at first rendered it doubtful whether 
Disraeli would be present. Mr. Mallock, there- 
fore, never came, but, almost unexpectedly, Dis- 
raeli did, and talked a good deal to the lady of the 
house about the absent author and other kindred 
subjects. "I place," he said, "the 'New Re- 
public ' in a genuinely original trio, appearing 
within something like half a century. First in 
order of tiine came my own ' Popanilla 'in 1828; 
then " (looking towards Lawrence Oliphant, who 
happened to be of the company) " ' Piccadilly ' ; 
and now, 1877, the ' New Republic' With these 
exceptions, in that department of satire and fan- 
tasy to which they belonged, I cannot recall any 
other works owing so little in idea and execution 
to other writers of the time." 

Lord Beaconsfield's more short and sententious 
condensations of experience, wisdom, and wit 
were mostly reserved for a tete-a-tete, generally 
with some lady of about his own age . Such were 
his aphorisms treasured and reproduced by Mrs. 
Reynolds as follows : " I hope," she had casually 

288 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

said, "you are quite well. Lord Beaconsfield ? " 
" No one," came in solemn tones the reply, " is 
quite well ; I am tolerably well, thank you." 
The only books that really amused him were of 
the samie order as his father's " Curiosities," etc. 
" As for novels," was his deliverance, " when I 
want to read one I write one " ; and again, " Yes, 
I confess to being a flatterer ; people like it ; 
but in the case of royalty you must lay it on with 
a trowel." He had passed the night beneath the 
roof of one of his strongest supporters in the 
Midlands. Before he left the next morning the 
host brought forward his two little boys, with the 
request that the departing guest would say to each 
something which he might remember. " My 
boy," were the words vouchsafed to the elder, 
" never you ask in going through life who wrote 
the ' Letters of Junius,' or they will think you a 
bore." "And you," the younger was next told, 
" never want to know about the ' man in the iron 
mask,' or they'll think you a bigger bore than 
your brother." 

His political and literary work apart, Disraeli 
must be remembered as the most magnificent type 
and forerunner of nineteenth-century Semitism's 
social triumphs. Two great ladies chiefly minis- 
tered to his enjoyment in the later days. Of 

these the superb Lady Chesterfield, like Lady 

289 T 



Great Victorians 

Bradford, had not known him during his strug- 
gling period. Her sister, however, the not less 
beautiful and stately Lady Anson, had believed in 
and backed him from the first. " No genius for 
practical politics ! " she had exclaimed when some 
one sneered at the " dandified Jew." " Why, 
did he not invent George Bentinck, who, before 
he knew ' the Jew,' had scarcely ever opened his 
mouth at Westminster? " And " the Jew " lived 
to win full satisfaction for the social slights placed 
upon him by the Lennox, Bentinck, and Stanley 
gang. 

In 1870 the party m'anagers had fixed for Whit 
Monday the Crystal Palace dinner of Conserva- 
tive Associations, memorable for Disraeli's decla- 
ration in favour of an Imperial Customs Union. 
The Duke of Abercorn, with some other grand 
Transparencies and great Panjandrums, wanted 
the day changed. " Don't," the great man said 
quite sharply, " talk to me of your dukes, but 
arrange as it was decided." 

In his sorrows especially he turned instinc- 
tively for comfort to those of his own race. 
" Circumstances," he once said to Mrs. Singleton, 
" have taken me much away from home and com- 
pelled me to talk a good deal ; but Nature in- 
tended me not only for a silent but a domestic 

man." Part of the secret of his devotion to his 

290 



St. Mary's, Winton, to Curzon Street 

wife was that, in Baroness Lionel Rothschild's 
words, " she always understood and never bored 
him." Her wealth made him independent of 
office, just as, even at the outset, his patrimony, 
even without the addition to it from his pen, might 
with economy have sufficed for all his wants. 
Nothing deepened his gratitude to his wife more 
than the comfortable home with which she en- 
dowed him at Grosvenor Gate, bringing, as it did, 
within his reach the hospitalities that were so 
useful in holding together the different sections 
of his followers. During this year I once heard 
him say, " I have had the pleasure of entertain- 
ing more than five hundred of my friends." The 
State dinners were well done and the wine was 
first-rate. Except on such occasions wine and 
cookery were of the simplest and cheapest, and 
after dark no gaslights burned in the hall. He 
felt the cold almost painfully. " The only time," 
said to me Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, " that I 
ever saw him burst out into a real fit of rage 
was during a not really severe winter at Bourne- 
mouth. I had suggested his coming there for its 
mildness. On calling at the hotel I found him 
furious because he could not get the tempera- 
ture of his room up to sixty degrees. As I 
went out the manager stopped me to say, ' Lord 
Beaconsfield told me he considered the house, 

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Great Victorians 

the place, and everything to do with them an 
imposture." 

Last scene of all : In the final sickness Sir 
Richard Quain had for his colleague a doctor 
recommended many years earlier by Disraeli's 
then private secretary, Ralph Earle. This was 
the happily still surviving Dr . Joseph Kidd ; he 
saw the signs of the approaching end about 
2 a.m. ; he imparted his fears to Lord Rowton, 
who summoned Quain. Those three stood or sat 
by the dying man till all was over. During the 
last hour or two there was very little conscious- 
ness, and few words of any kind came from the 
lips. Actually the last— I had it directly from 
Quain himself— were, " I am oppressed." 



292 



CHAPTER IX 
A CAMBRIDGE HOUSE HENCHMAN AND ORACLE 

Abraham Hayward and the French gentleman on " parasites " — 
The funeral service and mourners — At Blundell's School, 
Tiverton — Articled to an Ilchester solicitor — His lineage 
and ancestors — The lady's opinion of Hayward : " What a 
horrid man ! " — Disliked by Disraeli — Starts the Law 
Magazine — Thiers calls on Hayward — Their conversation 
about the alliance which was " hopeless " — Bismarck and 
the Kiel Canal — In the Lyme Pathway case — Roebuck 
excludes him from the Benchers of the Temple — " Hayward, 
Hayward, come back !" — Violet Fane, impatient at first, but 
apologetic afterwards — Melbourne on " a big balance at the 
banker's " — At his death-bed — Kinglake with him to the last. 

About the middle of the Victorian era an intelli- 
gent little French gentleman, paying his first visit 
to London, was eagerly investigating our social 
polity. He had found his cicerone in the 
memorably ruse and repandu Abraham Hayward. 
That accomplished belles -lettrist, barrister, man of 
the world, and tamfe cat to the great Whig and 
Liberal houses of his time, was better qualified 
than any mto then living to initiate a stranger 
into the innermost mysteries of polite life. 

293 



Great Victorians 

" Just below the highest and most aristocratic 
classes," explained this mentor to his Tele- 
machus, " are certain men who, while not bom 
of kin to the purple, live with the great ones of 
the earth on term's of intimacy, and are always 
welcome at their dinner-tables or in their draw- 
ing-rooms." The stranger's face at once 
brightened. " I understand perfectly," he said. 
" These are what you call ' parasites.' " It was 
an apt remark, though it might have given offence 
had the gentleman to whom it was addressed 
cared to take it personally, because Society then 
possessed no more typical member of the class 
than himself. 

The best idea of Hayward's place in the great 
world during more than half a century is given 
by the representative names of those who, on 
February 6, 1885, attended the memorial service 
in St. James's Church, Piccadilly. Mr. Glad- 
stone, then Prime Minister, placed a wreath of 
snowdrops, fresh from Hawarden, on the pall. 
Near him were two of his Cabinet colleagues, 
several of those who had held high office in other 
Administrations, the President of the Royal 
Academy, delegates of all the learned societies, 
the editors of The Times and of all the great 
weekly, monthly, or quarterly reviews. Among 
historians there were J. A. Eroude, W. E. H. 

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Cambridge House Henchman and Oracle 

Lecky, and his lifelong and closest intimate, 
A. W. Kinglake. The muses had sent the best 
known after Tennyson and least understood 
of nineteenth -century poets, Robert Browning. 
Society agreed to see in Hayward the habitue of 
its favourite resorts, the most pointed as well as 
the sharpest conversationist of the time, a good 
deal of the epicure, and not a little of the cynic. 
All, or most of this, he no doubt was. He had 
also other qualities, moral as well as mental — a 
genuine determination to get at the truth, a hatred 
of pretence and sham, a consuming earnestness in 
whatever he took up. These attributes made 
Hayward a type, not so much, perhaps, of his 
time, as of all that was most distinctive of the 
English tem'per itself. Born into the class of 
smaller landed gentry, he lost nothing, but prob- 
ably gained much, from not going to a great 
public school or university, but to Blundell's 
School, Tiverton, a " West Country Winchester," 
and very shortly afterwards beginning the appren- 
ticeship for his career. The associations of his 
Wiltshire birthplace, Wilton, near Salisbury, had 
formed, as we shall presently see, a little educa- 
tion in themselves. A Somersetshire mother of 
refined tastes, a well-to-do uncle, her brother, 
and a little later the run of a really good library, 

secured him the intellectual training and oppor- 

295 



Great Victorians 

tunities calculated to give him, in the most useful 
form, the varied culture and experience which 
constituted his working capital when, coming to 
London in 1824, he began keeping his terms 
at the Inner Temple, where he was duly called 
eight years afterwards. " My father's people," 
Hayward once said to me in one of his autobio- 
graphical humours, " the Hillcotts of Wiltshire, 
once had a really good estate, which ought to 
have made me independent for life ; and all that 
reading could give I got beneath the roof of the 
Ilchester solicitor to whom I was apprenticed. 
I got, however, more than this. For the good 
parents, and especially the extraordinarily gifted 
mother of my lifelong friend Kinglake, made 
their house in the Taunton district, called 
'Wilton,' my second home." 

" It was," Hayward went on, " something per- 
haps to have for one's ancestors people who, like 
these Hillcott Haywards, had the pas of all the 
parishioners in entering church. It was a good 
deal more to live in my Wiltshire birthplace,, 
under the very shadow of the Pembroke man- 
sion, in a different way as much an historical 
monument as Stonehenge itself. In the picture- 
gallery of Wilton House, as a child of eight or 
ten, I first got the idea that English history, 
properly looked at, would be found only another 

296 



Cambridge House Henchman and Oracle 

and longer corridor of portraits. Fitting on my 
own head the cap once worn by Charles I when 
he slept at * Wilton ' on his way to Carisbrooke, 
I seemed to imbibe some of the old cavalier's 
spirit, making me a high Tory till I came to years 
of discretion, as all my elders and betters on both 
sides were, and more particularly my Taunton 
uncle, Richard. I By.' first sending me to Blundell's 
School at Tiverton, and then to the Ilchester 
attorney's office, he put me in the way of 
getting exactly that kind of knowledge which 
stood me in better stead than had I gone with my 
friend Kinglake, as both he and his good mother 
wished, to Eton first and Cambridge afterwards. 
The Wilton family also were my first patrons. 
Sidney Herbert's introductions got me on to the 
staff of the Peelite Morning Chronicle. Together 
with a tolerably good knowledge of German and 
French, they procured m'e, when I was abroad, 
quite a cosmopolitan acquaintance ; for, from 
his partly Russian parentage .2 Russians, then 

^ From that relative's patronymic Hayward derived his 
Christian name, Abraham. That, he always insisted, was Jewish 
only in sound, and meant etymologically " auburn." Abraham, 
indeed, is, or used to be, a not uncommon Somerset surname, 
but Abraham Hayward's thick lips and Jewish nose led many 
people into the pardonable error of crediting him with the 
Hebrew lineage that he always vehemently disclaimed. 

^ Sidney Herbert's father was the eleventh Earl of Pembroke, 
and his mother was Count Woronzow's daughter. 

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Great Victorians 

great personages in all continental society, looked 
upon Sidney Herbert as one of themselves." 

The qualities that gave Hay ward's literary gifts 
a place among the personal forces of his time 
were moral as well as intellectual. His genuine- 
ness, intensity, abhorrence of trickery and im- 
posture, of falsehood and sham ; his dauntless 
determination to arrive, in every case, at the facts 
himself, and to prevent others being misled by 
phrases, "wrung many withers." " Hay ward," 
said a well-known chaperon to her charge, " will 
do you vehement justice if you are wrongly 
attacked, but will show you no mercy if you 
make a slip." " What a horrid man ! " was the 
not unnatural exclamation. Horrid or not, she 
well knew he had, as things then were, to be pro- 
pitiated. " Professional beauties," indeed, had 
not at this time come in. " Beauty parties," with 
whose arrangement Hay ward had much to do, 
were in great vogue, and brought him requests 
for invitation cards ; he granted none of these 
unless he considered the aspirant camfe up to 
the proper standard, not only of good looks, but 
of good company. 

As for men, Hayward was engaged in some- 
thing like a lifelong warfare with only two — 
Bernal Osborne, a rival conversationist he called 
too flippant, and Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), 

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Cambridge House Henchman and Oracle 

whom he thought an impostor, and who cordially 
reciprocated his antipathy. For Hayward had 
been the first to expose, in the Morning 
Chronicle, the twofold plagiarism of Disraeli's 
funeral panegyric on the Duke of Wellington. 
First the English speaker had appropriated the 
artistic phrases and the impressive imagery of 
Thiers' eulogism of Marshal St. Cyr. Secondly, 
he had not read that oration in the original 
French. He only knew of it from Hayward's 
own rendering in the newspaper, and of that 
version he adopted the actual words . Quite apart 
from this incident, Disraeli's character seemed to 
Hayward essentially false, just as Mr. Glad- 
stone's, in spite of all his mistakes, had in it 
the ring of truth. 

That he might have, as the psalmist puts it, 
the tongue and also " the pen of a ready writer," 
he found an opening for forensic as well as news- 
paper exercise. He made himself a really good 
lawyer by working in chambers all day. He 
listened most evenings of the week to the masters 
of debate at St. Stephen's, where most of his 
spare half-crowns went in inducing the door- 
keepers to give him a good place. When not 
there he practically studied the art of addressing 
an assemblage or convincing a jury in the London 
Debating Society, then frequented in their extra- 

299 



Great Victorians 

parliamentary period by the budding orators, the 
social wits, and the political philosophers of the 
time. At these discussions J. A. Roebuck on 
the Radical, and Hayward on the Conservative, 
or more often high Tory, side, were the rival 
champions . 

After being called to the Bar in 1832, a 
cleverly planned foreign tour made him almost 
as much of a personage in continental society as 
he had become in English. He just missed 
Goethe, but he lived familiarly with Tieck ; to 
the Countess Hahn-Hahn he became all that he 
afterwards was to Lady Waldegrave. In France 
he struck up a friendship with Thiers, lasting till 
his death. With that acquaintance began the 
constant interchange of visits and hospitalities 
between English men of letters and the intellec- 
tual lights of the Orleanist monarchy that during 
much of the nineteenth century's first half 
annexed certain more or less distinguished houses 
on both sides of the Channel to a single Anglo- 
French set ; its best known members in France 
being Thiers and Tocqueville, in this country 
Henry Reeve, Kinglake, A. H. Layard, and Hay- 
ward. A further friendly link of intellectual 
union between the two nations forecast, and even 
prepared the way for, the Entente of our own 
times. This link was forged by Hayward in the 

300 



Cambridge House Henchman and Oracle 

Law Magiazine, whose pages brought together 
the chief jurists on both sides of the Channel. 
The Franco-Prussian War showed the import- 
ance attached, at least in France, to this inter- 
national freemasonry. Just before the investment 
of Paris in 1870, Thiers, coming to England on 
a futile quest for an alliance, went to Hayward 
directly he reached London, and sounded his old 
friend on the possibility of the Gladstone Govern- 
ment supporting France. " The idea," at once 
said Hayward, " is quite hopeless." The visitor 
then began to argue his case and to talk about 
the balance of power. " My friend," Hayward 
broke in, "put all that stuff out of your head; 
we care for none of these things." 

One of the literary events between i860 and 
1870, watched with equal interest at home and 
abroad, was the collection of Hayward's essays 
into the volumes which have not yet lost all their 
readers. As a writer, indeed, his European repu- 
tation rested on the translation of Faust (1833). 
This opened to him the Athenaeum, and coincided 
with the beginning of his club life generally. 
He was among the earliest instances of the pen 
alone proving the key to the co-operative cara- 
vanserais of St. James's Street and Pall Mall ; 
and he headed in 1845 the list of a hundred 
additional members taken into the Carlton. At 

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Great Victorians 

the Bar his conduct of the great Lyme Pathway 
case brought him many briefs. Roebuck's oppo- 
sition prevented his becoming a Bencher of the 
Inner Temple but not his receiving " silk." His 
old Wilton friends, as said above, found him 
a new opening in the Press, on the reorganized 
Morning Chronicle, bought by Sidney Herbert 
and others in the Free Trade and Peelite interest . 
Apart from his pen no one not in Parliament had 
so much to do with the arrangements for the 
Coalition Government of 1852. George Smythe, 
the original of " Coningsby," had just lost his 
seat for Canterbury ; he was chosen by Hayward 
for his chief colleague and leader-writer. 

Delane of The Times was unlike Hayward in 
being not a learned, a specially literary man, or, 
indeed, anything more than a shrewd, open- 
minded, genial citizen of the world. His editorial 
dignity did pot give him more influence abroad 
and at home than Hayward had secured by his 
pen and tongue alone. The future Napoleon HI 
when in exile in London had consulted the leading 
spirit of the Peelite newspaper as a kind of oracle. 
The Taunton uncle from whom Hayward had 
expectations, calling on his nephew in his Temple 
chambers, had been disgusted a few years earlier 
at not finding him deep in his law books and 
briefs, but engaged with no other visitor than 

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Cambridge House Henchman and Oracle 

the future Napoleon III, the worst specimen, 
as the uncle thought, of a needy foreign 
adventurer . 

Hayward's crowning triumph as a practical 
politician came in 1864. The Prussian policy of 
dismembering Denmark by the Schleswig-Hol- 
stein annexation, coming, as it did, a year after 
the Heir-apparent's marriage to a Danish princes, 
had raised the anti -German feeling to fever 
height, and brought us to the verge of what would 
have been a popular war. On July 23, 1863, 
Palmerston, as Prime Minister, had, it was 
thought, committed England to the defence of 
Denmark. As a fact, however, the public sen- 
timent thus voiced proved neither general nor 
deep. After a few weeks or even days. Parlia- 
ment and Press alike endorsed Lord Stanley's 
words that a European war for the sake of the 
Duchies would be an act, not only of impolicy 
but of insanity. Full of all this. Hay ward called 
at Cambridge House and sat with Lady Pal- 
merston till her lord returned from the Cabinet. 
The minister had an unusually worn and weary 
look. Hay ward, therefore, after a few words, 
rose to go, and left the room ; he had almost 
reached the bottom of the stairs leading into the 
hall when he saw the master of the house leaning 
over the banisters above. He next heard the 

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Great Victorians 

voice, " Hayward, Hayward, come back ! " The 
re-entering visitor then encountered the question, 
" What does all this mean? " " It means," came 
the answer, " that none of you seem to know to 
what you are heading." " Surely," rejoined the 
minister, " Russell and I have not gone beyond 
a moderate and rational patriotism." 

Hayward then showed his careful and minute 
analysis of the party groups and individual 
opinions on both sides, conclusively proving as 
they did the progressive formation of an irresis- 
tible majority against war. " If you doubt me, 
ask Brand [the ministerial whip] . Unless," 
he wound up, " you execute an immediate change 
of front you will be out in a week." A day or 
two later Palmerston went down to the House and 
announced the " right -about -face." Hay ward's 
influence with Palmerston first, as with Gladstone 
afterwards, arose not only from his thoroughly 
practical turn of mind, but in foreign affairs his 
accurate information about the personal views of 
statesmen abroad and the steady, if often un- 
noticed, movement of feeling and conviction at 
home. As regards the questions now looked back 
upon, he almost alone among Englishmen knew 
that Bismarck, then first asserting himself, was 
bent on taking the Duchies because at their north- 
eastern corner lay the harbour of Kiel. This, in 

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Cambridge House Henchman and Oracle 

Prussian hands, would facilitate the linking by 
a canal of the Baltic with the North Sea. 

Ha3^ward delighted in the reputation of being 
behind the political scenes, but never betrayed 
a confidence or spoke of anything for which he 
could not give chapter and verse. A really good 
judge of cookery and writer on it, he was a 
diner-out, not as a gourmet but as an observer 
of life and character. " Within this twelve- 
month," he said not long before his death, " I 
have dined away from home — that is, from the 
club— only three times." " Cold beef," were the 
last words I ever heard him utter on this subject, 
" if you like, but good claret and plenty of it." 
He might have added, " And no talker in the com- 
pany except myself." Failing that condition, he 
did not show to advantage, and generally re- 
mained silent throughout the evening. Hence 
he could not socially co-exist with " a dinner- 
table and smoking-room hack like Bernal 
Osborne, with a master of monologue like 
Macaulay, with his friend Lord Houghton, a fine 
intellect spoiled by paradox, or with Anthony 
Trollope, whose boisterous ways formed a striking 
contrast to his own delicate dissections of 
feminine life and character." Great ladies 
like the hostesses of Strawberry Hill and 
Cambridge House consulted Hayward about 

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Great Victorians 

their parties. Smaller ones, especially if of 
a literary turn, were afraid of him. The 
highly endowed authoress who won fame as 
" Violet Fane " once showed a little impatience 
at a story he was telling. *' He will never forgive 
you," said a bystander ; " you, who wish to suc- 
ceed in literature, have mortally offended the 
' great Cham ' of latter-day criticism." The Mrs. 
Singleton of those days took the first oppor- 
tunity of apologizing, and received from him a 
lecture upon the satisfaction natural to an elderly 
man from perceiving that younger men and 
especially younger women are anxious to avoid 
wounding his susceptibilities. 

In education and sympathies belonging, like 
Macaulay, to the eighteenth as well as the nine- 
teenth century, Hayward linked by his personal 
experience the Melbournian with the Palmerston- 
ian period. He was at Brocket with Melbourne 
shortly before he died and found Mrs. Norton 
in the room. Presently Melbourne came up to 

him and said, " It is a d d good thing to have 

a big balance at your banker's, and it is a 

d d bad thing when a woman finds it out." 

Hayward lodged all his best-known years at 
8 St. James's Street (beneath the roof which had 
once sheltered Byron). Here, ministered to 
during his last illness chiefly by his lifelong friend 

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Cambridge House Henchman and Oracle 

Kinglake, he died . A little before the end his 
sister came from Dorsetshire, to take him, should 
he recover, to her house at Lyme Regis for his 
convalescence. " Yes," Kinglake tried to comfort 
his friend, " we will all go down there and start 
soon." "Why delay at all?" said the dying 
Hay ward. " There shall be no delay," returned 
Kinglake. "The servants are packing now, and 
you would not wish to hurry them." " On no 
account," murmured the dying man, " hurry the 
servants." A few seconds later he said : " I have 
no fear of death ; I have some faith and I know 
there is something grand." These were his last 
words . 



307 



CHAPTER X 

MID-VICTORIAN TYPES AND FORCES IN CHURCH, 
STATE, SOCIETY, AND LETTERS 

A. W. Kinglake on travelling in the Crimea then and now — The 
Eton all-night flogging — " Eothen's " luck in coming last — 
The duel that was not fought— The two seconds at the 
Travellers' Club — Lord Tennyson's social mentor — The 
remnant of the Cambridge " Apostles " in London — A 
distinguished dinner-party at Dean Milman's — The host's 
stories about Frederick the Great — What happens when 
Bishops meet — The lifelong social competition of Bishop 
Wilberforce and Cardinal Manning — Archbishop Temple 
recalled as he received the junior clergy in his Exeter 
days — Cardinal Manning's Riviera in Westminster — The 
Cardinal on Anglican sermons and their falling off — How 
Lord Macaulay was introduced in his reading to a 

"Mr. Sponge" — " dark and smells of cheese" — A 

reminiscence of "Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities" — The 
rise and progress of his creator — Whyte-Melville and the 
Divorce Court phrase — Improved on by George Alfred 
Lawrence — How "Guy Livingstone" was written and with 
what results — The meeting of the wits in Air Street, Regent 
Street — George Lawrence's rise, progress, character, and 
work — Introduced at a Richmond dinner to Ouida by 
Harry Stone — A visit to Francis E. Smedley, the author 
of " Frank Fairlegh " and " Harry Coverdale's Courtship " — 
How the nineteenth-century masters had to wait till the 
twentieth for their full influence on English letters — J. A. 
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Mid-Victorian Types and Forces 

Froude and W. E. H. Lecky in conversation and in 
print — Thorold Rogers and the scientific historians — E. A. 
Freeman's musical ri es in the Mendip lanes — Freeman, 
Browning, and "Kentish Sir Byng" — Bishop Stubbs in the 
fallentis semita vitcz — The historian as editor — Froude's 
advice to his " Eraser " writers — Dickens' readings in the 
West — How Thackeray was coming, but thought better of 
it — Dickens's intellectual legacy to his family — Disraeli and 
Dickens on the eloquence of their time — The Dickens 
school — Edmund Yates, his originality and his obligations — 
Had he an Egeria? — From "Edmund" to "Henry" — 
"Labby" as raconteur and Radical — With Grant-Duff at 
Orleans House — How Don Emelio Castelar visited Galway 
and heard his health proposed in an unknown tongue. 

The friend who has just been seen by Abraham 
Hayward's death-bed, like two or three more of 
his old Cambridge set, personified the militant 
patriotism which the stirring events of the times 
had helped to develop. During the eighties 
Kinglake had heard some one speak of travelling 
in the Crimea with a special permit from the 
Russian Government. " In my time," Kinglake 
observed, " an Englishman went wherever he 
liked in the Crimea without leave at all." I may 
recall a characteristic display of his electioneer- 
ing adroitness on the Bridgwater hustings, wit- 
nessed during childhood by myself. " Eothen " 
had then made him a literary and social lion of 
some ten years' standing, but probably had not 
been read by 2 per cent, of the electors. 
Standing as a Liberal, he was pitted in his speech- 

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Great Victorians 

making against the Conservative, Spencer Follett, 
far and away the finest orator that most people 
in the West of England had then heard . 

Though nowhere at the subsequent polling, he 
knew how to humour the sentiment and flatter 
the local patriotism of the crowd. " My experi- 
ences of foreign travel," he said, " certainly had 
their charm. But, gazing on Libanus and Anti- 
libanus, I could not but feel their inferiority to 
my own Mendip, Quantock, and Blackdown. 
Even the River Jordan seemed to me quite un- 
worthy of comparison with our own River Parret." 
" Something of the vogue which, with a limited 
circle, ' Eothen ' won, was due," Kinglake once 
told me, " less to my writing than to Ollivier's 
coloured pictures in the first edition, verging as 
they often did on caricature, of Mexborough, my 
travelling companion, and myself. People, how- 
ever," he went on, " soon got disappointed ; for 
the women seemed to think I ought to be a sort 
of Don Juan ; and that was not then my humour." 
He was one of those persons to whom adventures 
seemed to have a way of naturally coming, or 
whose everyday experiences had in them an un- 
usually large element of the adventurous. At 
Eton he had been one of the division that Keate 
stayed up all night to flog. " Keate," he told me, 
*' had a remarkable fancy for working himself 

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Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

into a scarlet-faced passion for little or nothing. 
A few days before, because some boy had been 
inattentive he kept us in long after the usual time. 
' Well,' I murmured too audibly, ' if this is not a 
shame, there never was one.' The Head over- 
heard, threatened me with a special flogging or 
expulsion, but, instead of either, remonstrated 
with me most kindly. He seemed quite wounded 
in his feelings when on the fatal night my turn for 
execution came. But the Doctor had been at it 
ever since about lo p.m.; his arm, therefore, 
was rather tired, so I got off pretty easily." The 
trio of intimates to which Kinglake belonged 
included, not only Hay ward, but also Eliot 
Warburton, whose " Crescent and the Cross " 
came out in the same year as " Eothen " (1844). 
Warburton considered he received from Lord 
Ranelagh an insult, demanding the satisfaction 
due in such cases from and to a gentleman . It was 
agreed, therefore, that a Norfolk squire, named 
Pack, should act for Ranelagh and that Kinglake 
should represent Warburton. " Rack," to give 
Kinglake's words, " was t!o call on me at ' The 
Travellers',' between 7 and 9 p.m. He arrived 
punctually, a jolly, red-faced. East Anglian 
squire, up for the cattle week, fresh from a dinner 
at the Windham, washed down by abundance of 
that club's then famous port. He almost em- 

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Great Victorians 

braced me in his effusive geniality and opened the 
interview with, ' I always say that Ranelagh is a 
gentleman.' As icily as I could," continued 
Kinglake, " I said, ' That I am willing to assume.' 
The words had an extraordinary effect ; for they 
at once froze him sober." Kinglake, like most 
of his friends, had always been on intimate 
terms with the first President of the third 
French Republic. On the official headquarters 
being removed to Versailles, he paid his old friend 
a visit, riding for that purpose on horseback from 
Paris. In person, manner, age, and everything, 
no greater contrast could be imagined than that 
between the author of " Eothen " and the baronet 
who then represented Chelsea. But, as Kinglake 
alighted at his friend's residence, he found a 
crowd collected round him, saying, to his great 
amusement, " II doit etre Sir Dilke." 

Through Kinglake I was often in the company 
of his most famous Cambridge contemporaries. 
Long before then, indeed, during school or 
college holidays, I had been made known to 
Tennyson by my dear old friend, that noble - 
hearted gentleman, Henry Sewell Stokes, the 
Laureate's frequent host, beneath his roof in 
Strang ways Terrace, Truro. On the banks of 
the Fal, near Tregothnan, where I was watching 
some fishermen mending their boats, the great 

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Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

man, then in a remarkably vigorous middle age, 
conspicuous chiefly for his brilliantly flashing, 
jet black eyes and dense crop of hair to match, 
often strolled up to me, and always when the 
boat -repairing was in progress, took out a pocket 
edition of the " Odyssey," opened it at the 
description of Ulysses constructing his raft, and 
turned to the operations then in progress before 
him. Then, with the Greek classic in one hand 
and the other pointing to the details of the boat- 
tinkering, he mouthed out, in his deep -chested 
sing-song, the features of their industry common 
to the Cornish toilers and their Homeric proto- 
types. I did not see the Laureate again till 
I was presented to him in Sir James Knowles's 
suburban garden, as he sat together with the other 
great bard of the day, Robert Browning, receiving 
a few favoured fellow -guests at the entrance of 
a little tent on the lawn. All the familiarity of 
early and lifelong friendship showed itself in 
Kinglake's talk with Tennyson when no other 
guest but myself was there. At Cambridge the 
two men often dined together at a tavern. In 
London they periodically kept up the practice at 
the Fleet Street " Cock." The Laureate then still 
retained his picturesque presence, with all the 
added impressiveness of years. As to how or 
what he looked he had become altogether in- 

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Great Victorians 

different. His slouch felt hats and his capacious 
cloaks were worn till there was no more wear in 
them and were replaced from a little stock of both 
articles v/hich he always had on hand to avoid, 
save at the longest intervals, the loathed visit to 
hatters or tailors for a fresh supply. " My dear 
Alfred," one of his old Cambridge " Apostles," 
generally Lord Houghton, would say, " be a little 
more careful, or they will take you for one of 
Carlyle's ' old clo'esmen ' from Houndsditch or 
Petticoat Lane." To enjoy or even fully under- 
stand Tennyson's intimate talk one almost ought, 
as Thackeray, his contemporary on the Cam, told 
Browning, to have been with him at college, 
because, I suppose, of his frequent allusions to 
colloquies or discussions with his Cambridge 
associates on Shakespeare and the musical 
glasses, on every age of English and classical 
literature, as if they had been held only the other 
day and could be recalled by the company in 
which he happened to be half a century later. 
Tennyson's literary judgments were towards the 
close of his life what they were at the beginning. 
Dryden he admired for his unexpectedness. 
"But," he asked, " why should Dryden have 
drawn Alexander as the great fool which his poem 
makes him? Cowper in his short poems was an 
individual and a thorough gentleman to boot. 

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Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

Byron said nothing not literally true in praise of 
Pope's imagination and fancy." But as for 
Byron's own narrative poems, Tennyson much 
preferred the headlong drollery of Barham's 
Nicholas in the " Ingoldsby Legends " to the 
" Bride of Abydos." " I myself," said the bard, 
"like my own shorter pieces the best. As for 
our friend Browning, are not his ' Ride from 
Ghent,' his ' Cavalier Lays,' and ' Herve Riel ' 
worth all his modern epics put together. In 
expression," he went on, " I am not perhaps 
below Sophocles, but there's nothing in me." 
" That," commented Lord Houghton, " was the 
height of paradoxical exaggeration. For the 
Broad Church divines, Maurice and F. W. 
Robertson, found their gospel in ' The Two 
Voices,' and in * In Memoriam,' while Herschell, 
Owen, Sedgwick, and Tyndall read in him the 
reconciliation of science and religion." Tenny- 
son had always been absent-minded. As years 
went on he almost rivalled in this quality Sir Isaac 
Newton himself. Henry Irving the actor, who 
latterly saw more than most people of him, was 
his frequent guest both at Freshwater and Aid- 
worth. A bottle of port generally appeared with 
the dessert ; the guest was always offered and 
never touched the wine, which the host, in an 
abstracted manner, would slowly sip, gradually 

315 



Great Victorians 

coming to the last glass. As he swallowed this, 
he would turn to Irving and say, "Do you always 
take a bottle of port after your dinner? " 

The least remembered, but assuredly not the 
least remarkable, of the Kinglake -Tennyson 
group was the famous banker and economist 
whose visible monument to-day is the London 
County and Westminster Bank. Jones Loyd, 
till his death as Lord Overstone in 1883, had 
lived much at Cambridge with all the " Apostles," 
if not himself actually one of the number. 
He shared to the full during the stormy 
fifties the warlike enthusiasm of his friends. 
Benjamin Disraeli, Morell Mackenzie, the throat 
specialist, and the just mentioned Henry Irving, 
all impressed one with an extraordinary feeling 
of intellectual power and a superiority over their 
fellows. So, too, did Overstone. No one could 
be in his company for half an hour without the 
consciousness of looking upon a unique combina- 
tion of mental strength generally, with insight 
into individual character and statesmanlike 
sagacity. Together with Kinglake and Fitz- 
gerald he was the Laureate's guest in the Isle of 
Wight. After dinner Tennyson read aloud his 
invitation to the Rev. F. D. Maurice, and came 
to the lines : — 

Where, if below the milky steep 
Some ship of battle slowly creep. 
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Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 






Here Overstone, his face aglow with enthusiasm 
and a note of triumiph in his voice, looking in the 
direction of the sea, burst in with, " Would to 
Heaven I could now see, not one, but a hundred, 
good ships of the line sailing eastward ! " 

During the first year of my settlement in 
London I called, as I had been invited to do, 
at the Deanery, St. Paul's, to find the front door 
blocked by some young people of both sexes, 
tumbling, as fast as they could after one another, 
into a huge travelling carriage and pair. They 
were the Dean's youthful relatives or dependents 
being taken off by him on their summer outing. 
When this holiday rite had been instituted railway 
locomotion was practically unknown on the other 
side of the Dover Straits, and the Milman family 
drove to the packet station on the English coast 
in their family coach, re-entering that vehicle as 
soon as they reached the French shore. Steam 
locomotion gradually penetrated every British and 
European corner. The Dean, however, clung to 
the fiction of the road, and compromised with the 
facts by beginning the journey behind a stout 
pair of horses, afterwards taking the water, gener- 
ally, I think, at Gravesend. So, at least, his 
accomplished son. Sir Archibald Milman, Clerk 
of the House of Commons, himself told me when 
I met him many years afterwards. Within a few 

317 



Great Victorians 

days of my call at the Deanery I dined beneath 
its roof. My chief fellow-guests were men whose 
fame seemed a piart of ancient history, with the 
single exception, I think, of the future Bishop of 
Exeter, then Headmaster of Rugby. Frederick 
Temiple, like all his " co-Essayists and Re- 
viewers," considered H. H. Milman's " History 
of the Jews " the first really great literary product 
of the Broad Church school, applying, as it did, 
the same critical tests to the Old Testament and 
other sacred writings as to uninspired and 
secular literature . Thus one of the septem contra 
Christum, eventually in 1896 Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, had been a familiar figure to me while he 
was Phillpotts' successor as Bishop of Exeter. 
Never till then, however, had I been so close to 
him as to estimate rightly his extraordinary 
strength of body and limb. Bred on a Tiverton 
farm, though the son of an Army officer, he justly 
gloried in his power to plough a straight furrow 
against any one, and might sometimes be seen 
helping, with his enormous shoulder, a coal -cart 

out of a rut or uphill. "The Hon. Mr. ," 

announced his servant as he sat in his study in the 
Exeter palace. The Bishop never looked up 
from his writing-table, but simply said, " Take 
a chair," and went on with his pen. " Perhaps, 
my lord," murmured the abashed visitor, " you 

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Mid-Victorian Types and Forces 

do not know that I come from " " Take two 

chairs ! " was the only episcopal acknowledgment 
vouchsafed. As for the host, he was very full, 
before dinner, of his latest travels abroad. 
Amongst other places, he had lately been at 
Prague. Here his patriarchal appearance, to- 
gether with his knowledge of Hebrew tongues 
and customs, had caused him to be taken for a 
distinguished foreign Rabbi ; by way of compli- 
ment the Synagogue officials gave him a copy 
of the " Torah," the Book of the Law, in other 
words, the " Pentateuch," to carry. While at 
Prague he saw much of an ancient Polish general, 
Skrynecki, who, he said, gave him almost a daily 
lesson in military tactics. But far the best of 
Milman's travellers' tales concerned themselves 
with Frederick the Great of Prussia, who had 
died only five years before the Dean's own 
birth, and whose memory at the timie of 
Milman's first German trip had been fresh 
enough for the visitor to bring back many 
good stories about him that, at least th^en, 
were quite new. Most of these had come 
immediately from Goethe, who reproduced the 
theatrical gestures with which Frederick attri- 
buted his attack on Maria Theresa to " the 
vivacity of my temperament, my well -filled war- 
chest, and my thirst for glory." " To the sage 

319 



Great Victorians 

of Weimar," said the Dean, " it seemed an out- 
break of the national ' Starnt and Drang ' period. 
For the comfort of posterity," added Milman, 
" Goethe spoke of the results entailed by- 
Frederick's precedent as likely to last into the 
twentieth century. Ages must pass," said the 
Dean, " before the great Prussian robber or his 
family traits can be understood. Look at the 
conditions under which he grew up. With his 
father, Frederick William' I, his life was never 
worth a day's purchase. As the greatest knave 
and rogue in Europe, he was condemned to pass 
about one-third of his youth in a fortress, and 
almost repeatedly escaped by a miracle being 
done to death. The sire who hanged one of his 
counsellors for a trivial offence, and compelled 
all the others to be present at the execution, was 
not likely to spare the son who had provoked his 
wrath by an unsuccessful attempt at escape to 
England, where his uncle, George I, was then 
King. Frederick William I had a kind of affec- 
tion for his wife ; he made her life scarcely less 
of a terror to her than existence became a burden 
to his son. The poor woman appealed to the 
English Court for help ; a royal separation be- 
came the fashionable talk of Berlin. ' It would 
be,' said Frederick William, ' like having a de- 
cayed tooth drawn— a momentary pang and then 

320 



Mid-Victorian Types and Forces 

one would get over it.' " In due course the son 
modelled himself upon the sire. The Potsdam 
Palace still contains many memorials of the 
second Frederick's friendship with Voltaire. 
Some of these exhibited at once its apparent 
warmth and its real danger to the great French 
writer. The Sans Souci archives were not at one 
time thought to explain satisfactorily the incidents 
causing the King's abuse of the poet as a fool, 
hypocrite, and traitor. To Milman the whole 
matter seemed perfectly clear. Voltaire's purpose 
of leaving Prussia was as unpardonable an offence 
in the eyes of his royal host as Admiral von 
Tirpitz considers the desire of a neutral trading 
ship to place itself outside the range of his guns. 
" The wretch," said Frederick, " wishes to hand 
my poems round Europe and make fun of them." 
As a fact, Voltaire had none of these verses in his 
possession. His imprisonment, therefore, came 
to an end after five weeks ; he then proceeded on 
his journey, and, safely gaining Switzerland, had 
his revenge in writing and publishing; during the 
sumtner of 1853 his scandalous but deadly 
satirical " Life of the King of Prussia." Small 
wonder, therefore, that J.-J. Rousseau, some 
years afterwards, would not walk into the trap 
from which Voltaire found it so difficult to escape. 
A cow and poultry, the cultivation of his own 

321 X 



Great Victorians 

vegetables, a quiet life with its necessaries, a sub- 
stantial pension, and liberty were the baits. 
" Why," said Jean -Jacques, " do you offer these 
things to me, but withhold them from the brave 
men who have lost a leg or arm in your service ? " 
" This monster," Goethe said to Milman, " was 
also a born sentimientalist, with crocodile's tears 
ever ready for the eyes. First one, then an- 
other, of his young military favourites died ; he 
insisted on keeping the dead bodies in his room 
till some time after decomposition had set in." 
Some of those who, on the occasion now re- 
called, were seen by me at St. Paul's Deanery, 
bore names that took one back into the Byronic 
period, if not a generation farther. To one who 
had only the day before yesterday put on his 
bachelor's hood, like the present writer, it was 
the entrance into a new world that was the old. 
Did I, some one asked me, know who it was 
that before dinner in the drawing-room had stood 
next to me, leaning against the mantelpiece? 
It turned out to be no less a person than the Whig 
manager and Liberal disciplinarian, the Right 
Hon. Edward Ellice, the great Earl Grey's son- 
in-law, who, it seemed, had been telling some one 
near me how absurdly the great Lord Brougham 
exaggerated his importance to and influence with 
the Grey Reform' Government. Of two Bishops 

322 



Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

present, one formed the only member of the com- 
pany I had ever seen before. This was the Right 
Rev. John Robert Eden, then Bishop of Bath and 
Wells ; but for his episcopal dress he might have 
been taken for a great Kentish or Somerset 
squire. Thackeray recounts his own almost in- 
credible experience of having known a lady 
sought in marriage by Horace Walpole. Exactly 
at the time now looked back upon I did not know 
the facts, but it seemed afterwards overwhelming 
to learn that my old friend the Somersetshire 
diocesan of the sixties must have been the 
brother of the Hon. Emily Eden, the first Lord 
Auckland's daughter, the only wom'an the second 
William Pitt is known to have loved, whose re- 
fusal to him by her father he took deeply to Iheart . 
The episcopal Lord Auckland, in the kindest 
way possible, presented me to another prelate 
present. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce had been 
installed in the Oxford see twenty years earlier. 
At a later date family accidents secured me his 
friendship and many good offices. At the 
Deanery dinner he sat next to Sir Charles Lyell 
and Michael Faraday. Lyell had just returned 
from a visit to Oxford, and told the company how 
he had found the general idea of the place to be 
that the Old Testament was a fabrication of some 
spiritually minded Jews and the New Testament 

323 



Great Victorians 

of some similarly disposed Christians afterwards. 
A propos of physical research and the Oxford 
curriculum., the Dean, who had known Sir Walter 
Scott well, quoted his disbelief in the improve- 
ment to be derived from the advancement of 
science, on the ground of its being the study 
whose ultimate tendency must be to harden the 
heart . Faraday, a propos of its intellectual value, 
said^ " Its education of the judgment has, for its 
first and last step, humility." After Bishop Wil- 
berforce, who left early, had gone, the tolerant 
and comprehensive host murmured, I think to the 
publisher, John Murray the third, the pleasure 
it would have given him had it been possible 
to see at his table Wilberforce's brother-in-law, 
Henry Edward Manning, who in the preceding 
spring had followed Cardinal Wiseman as Roman 
Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. The two 
men never, so far as I saw, met in private society, 
but constantly encountered each other at public 
and semi-public functions— always with something 
like competition between the two. Nothing on 
such occasions could exceed Wilberforce's vigi- 
lant adroitness and gentlemanlike tact. On the 
platform or at the table Manning kept a close 
look-out for the chance of taking precedence; 
of the Bishop. As surely as he had seemed to 
triumph by entering the room first or taking the 

324 



Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

place of honour, Wilberforce, up to that moment 
invisible, contrived to get ahead of him, and look 
back with a smile two -thirds seraphic and one- 
third satirical. Whatever the Bishop's strength 
or weakness in pure theology, he certainly stood 
high among the most accomplished men of his 
time. His real turn struck those who talked with 
him as less for divinity than for mathematics and 
physical science. Whether with pen, on platform, 
or at the dinner-table, he could at least hold his 
own, perhaps more, against the physical savants 
of his time. His, indirectly, was the suggestion 
that in early days caused the Dally Telegraph 
to make a point of publishing, at least once a 
week, a leader on some branch of national re- 
search. Thus typifying a marked intellectual 
tendency of his time, he was the earliest of the 
new school of bishops, Kvho used their ofhce not to 
glorify their apostleship but to serve their Church 
by sheer hard work. In the House of Lords over 
some scientific issue of the time a little breeze 
often sprang up between 'the Bishop and the 
Duke of Argyll, and occasionally, on a different 
issue, with Lord Shaftesbury, who once charged 
him with an offensive utterance. The Bishop was 
most indignant. " I can assure," he said, " the 
noble lord and the House that the utmost I sug- 
gested was that words of a certain sort, if not 

325 



Great Victorians 

emiployed in a purely Pickwickian sense, might 
be considered as verging on the unsavoury." 

Manning, perhaps Wilberforce's equal— no one 
could have been his superior — in administration, 
had by several years the start in the purely social 
race. He first made his mark during the season 
of 1856, when Mayfair welcomed him as a new- 
comer, a fine-looking, intellectual priest, with good 
manners and very agreeable, a friend of Sidney 
Herbert, with whom he had been at Harrow, and 
whom he rated very highly. Manning had not 
then begun proselytizing, and never spoke bitterly 
of the Church in v/hich he had been born and 
bred. He only lamented the loss of its influence 
with the middle and lower classes, due, as he 
thought, to the clergy's habit of writing their 
sermons. " That," he said, " made the preachers 
appear less in earnest, and also less careful in 
preparing their discourse than if they were about 
to speak it. You Anglicans," he added, " seem 
to forget that the artisans are a very sceptical 
and thinking race." Something to the same effect 
I heard from him many years later when he used 
to receive me at " Archbishop's House, West- 
minster." In the winter he used to keep his fire 
heaped up high and his room at a temperature 
which only the strongest heart could have borne. 

" This," he would say, pointing to the grate and 

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Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

the thermometer near it, " is my Riviera, and I 
command at home a chmate equal to anything in 
the South of France." 

" Turned over Philo, also some of a novel about 
sporting; a Mr. Sponge the hero." So wrote 
Macaulay in his diary for the spiring of 1856. 
More than a generation after this a well-known 
Member of Parliament and a Foreign Under- 
Secretary were groping their way out of the ill -lit 
hall and obscure garden path of a suburban villa 
where they had been dining. " Very dark," said 
the M.P. "Yes," was the Under-Secretary's 
comment, and, as if to amend and complete a 
faulty quotation, " ' Hellish dark and smells of 
cheese,' as said Mr. Jorrocks." It was indeed 
a quotation from the creator of " Soapy " Sponge, 
who had first achieved fame in sporting fiction 
by " Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities." This, like 
all the writings of Robert Smith Surtees, 
abounded in sentences such as the foregoing, 
constantly on the lips of school or college youths 
during the nineteenth century's first half. Such 
were verbal contortions a la Mrs. Malaprop, 
" Wot a consternation [constellation] of genius ! " 
and the Jorrockian exclamation, on being thrown 
from his horse over a wall into a cucumber frame, 
" My heyes, vot a splitter ! and all for a hppun 
note ! " As an undergraduate I saw more than 

327 



Great Victorians 

once this pioneer of the sporting novel, with his 
tall, erect form, high cheekbones, quiet dress, 
and grave expression of face^ at the Old Ship 
Hotel, Brighton. 

The second son of a Durham squire, who had 
bought his estate, Hambersley Hall, from the 
Swinburne family, Surtees went to the south coast 
while his family stuck to Scarborough. His most 
frequent companion at the " Ship " was John 
Leech, of Punch, and afterwards the illustrator of 
his own novels . Those were the days when noble 
sportsmen talked and dressed like professional 
coachmen and jockeys, when Thackeray's Jack 
Snaffle, Spavin, and Cockspur would have been 
flattered by being mistaken for grooms, and in 
any Turf transaction would have cheated their 
own fathers if by so doing they could have 
gained a point in the odds.i Those humours of 
the time were personified most faithfully in the 
pages of Surtees by the pencil of Leech. 

As regards dress and bearing, both Robert 
Smith Surtees and John Leech might have been 
taken for Church of England clergymen. And 
the fidelity of Surtees to the temper of his time 
will be the better realized when one remembers 
that Mark Lemon and Charles Dickens were 

^ "Book of Snobs," p. 191, Pocket Edition (Smith, Elder 
& Co.), 1887. 

328 



Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

then the lions of the Pavilion, and that J. B. 
Buckstone with Paul Bedford and J. L. Toole 
delighted the highest theatrical taste of the day 
at Mrs. Nye Chart's newly decorated playhouse. 

By this time Surtees, now a qualified solicitor, 
had gone into business in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
and, together with Rudolf Akermann, had started 
the very successful New Sporting Magazine. He 
still contrived, like Anthony Trollope at the Post 
Office, to get one or two days' hunting every 
week. By 1836 he had given up his magazine 
editing and inherited the North Country family 
estates, but by the pen-name of " The Yorkshire - 
man " or by his own gave a transcript in the 
" Jorrocks " series as well as in articles for Bells 
Life of his own adventures in town and country. 
Macaulay called the style of " Soapy " Sponge 
not vulgar but loose ; and though Surtees wrote 
about vulgar people and their stable tricks, he 
had profited too well by his study of Apperley's 
("Nimrod") Quarterly Review essays, and was 
too well bred a man of the world, to write 
vulgarly himself. 

Before Surtees died at the " Old Ship," 
Brighton, in 1864, he had lived long enough 
to see the rise of other sporting authors, who, 
writing rather in Apperley's style than his own, 
owed something to his example. Tall, heavy- 

329 



Great Victorians 

moustached and whiskered, languid of manner 
and look, G. J. Whyte-Melville, of the Cold- 
streams first and the Turkish Cavalry afterwards, 
was the very ideal of a thoroughbred b€au 
sabreur, with a bored and melancholy air, re- 
calling Sir Charles Coldstream in " Used Up," 
who had seen and done everything and " found 
nothing in it." Notwithstanding his air of dis- 
tressed dreaminess, he had a keen sense of fun, 
never shown more happily than in the church at 
St. Andrew's, when on a visit to his friend and 
publisher, John Blackwood. Dean Stanley was 
preaching a St. Bartholomew's Day sermon, and 
in it he used Dr. Chalmers's expiression, " the 
expulsive power of a new affection." Whyte- 
Melville whispered in his host's ear, " Capital 
phrase that, Blackwood, for the Divorce Court ! " 
To ride straight to hounds and to say nothing was 
his favourite prescription for a young man's suc- 
cess in after-life. Whyte-Melville often rode to 
hounds in the Oxford and Bucks country. While 
making the University town his headquarters, he 
met an undergraduate originally at Balliol, then 
(1850) about to take his B.A. from New Inn 
Hall, destined by the literary example of his 
accomplished elder afterwards to become a 
novelist as typical of his time as Whyte-Melville 
himself . 

330 



Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

This was George Alfred Lawrence, an Essex 
clergyman's son. Going from Rugby to Balliol 
in 1 845, he made himself a fair classic, nourishing 
himself in Greek, chiefly on Homer, exulting in 
the poet's sonorous cadence and swing and heroic 
pictures of battle and love. Next to " Digby 
Grand " and " Kate Coventry," the " Iliad " and 
" Odyssey " were the earliest intellectual forces 
contributing to the later piroduction of " Guy 
Livingstone " and " Sword and Gown," to men- 
tion only two in a long list. For each of these 
novels, all securing an immense vogue at the 
time, the publishers, Tinsley Brothers, paid 
Lawrence £1,000. At Oxford Lawrence's course, 
if not highly distinguished, had been in many 
respects exemplary. My old friend Mr. 
Strachan-Davidson, the present Master of Balliol, 
has very kindly ascertained for me that the 
college records show no black mark against him, 
and that his migration to the " Tavern " was 
altogether voluntary." Afterwards in business 
of every kind he showed himteelf the soul of 
method, punctuality, and honour. 

Lawrence was now beginning to be known in 

^ The Balliol register of terms kept begins only in 1852 — i.e. 
two years after Lawrence's time. The Latin register of offences 
against discipline, with admonitions and rustications, contains no 
reference to him whatever. 

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Great Victorians 

the " whole world " as well as in the " half- 
world." The notion that this, his first novel, 
formed an autobiography of his boyhood and 
youth increased the piquancy of his personal 
interests. To boys and very young men it 
possessed the same sort of fascination as Byron's 
poems, with their personages and their philo- 
sophy, in an earlier generation. The chubbiest 
of golden youths discarded their usual collars 
and ties and sported a neck -gear known as " « la 
Guy Livingstone." Others, in the Livingstonian 
fashion, " set their faces like a flint," and ad- 
dressed their sweethearts in tones of calm com- 
mand rather than the old-world voice of 
beseeching admiration. " The world consists of 
soldiers, the aristocracy, and others. Of these 
classes the first two treat as they please the 
third, which duly submits, and even rather likes 
it. Run off, supposing you can, with your 
friend's wife, if she likes you better than she 
does him. It is a duty you owe to Society. 
Should you be an excessively strong man, attack 
and terrify every one smaller than yourself. You 
have, perhaps, very little, and even no money. 
Get any one you can to trust you, and victimize 
them to the uttermost farthing. This is not 
swindling. It is simply being a ' detrimental.' 
If you are a man your two objects in life are 

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Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

the chasse de mariee and the chasse de renard, 
with, of course, frequent intervals of whist and 
e carte. Such is the whole duty of man. Stick 
to it ; never break your word to a friend, or 
keep it to a woman. You are then a gentleman 
and true to all the essential principijes of your 
' order.' " Such is the moral of the Livingstonian 
novels. Part of it, that relating to the chivalrous 
obligations of brute force, reads like a presage 
of twentieth -century Germanism in those mani- 
festations and precepts so well known to the 
world. It was the concentration, epitome, and 
amalgam of a theory of life which to boys of the 
mid-Victorian epoch exactly represented every- 
thing that " Childe Harold " and "Don Juan " 
did to their fathers. 

Anything specially autobiographical must be 
looked for only in " Border and Bastille " (1863) 
—recalling a journey to the United States to 
become a Confederate volunteer. Before Law- 
rence reached his destination he was taken 
prisoner and shut up in the guardhouse, jit 
took some time before Lord Lyons, then British 
Minister at Washington, secured his liberation 
on a promise that he would immediately return 
to England . 

A great gambler, he had what is not seldom 
the gambler's virtue of keeping his engagements 

333 



Great Victorians 

to the day and hour. The large sums sent to him 
at Baden-Baden or Homburg by the Catherine 
Street House were worked off as soon as uninter- 
mitting industry allowed. George Lawrence's 
muscular paganism formed a typical product of 
the literary movement that, first inspiring the 
muscular Christianity of Charles Kingsley and 
"Tom" Hughes, afterwards found its expression 
in the Army romancists, who, like James Grant, 
author of " The Aide-de-camp " and " The 
Romance of War," were in their beginnings the 
creations of Charles Lever alone. To each of 
these a good deal was owed by Lawrence, when, 
having left Oxford for chambers in the Temple, 
he settled finally in London. Here, thanks to his 
mother's titled relatives, he saw as much as he 
cared for of the smart aristocracy generally de- 
scribed in his novels as " the order " to which his 
heroes and heroines belonged. 

His first practical introduction to literary 
workers and work took place, soon after he left 
Oxford, in a little thoroughfare off Regent Street, 
at a house of call then much frequented by the 
most successful delineators of adventurous life. 
The chief acquaintances made by Lawrence at 
this place were G. P. R. James, during the in- 
tervals of his consular service in South America 
first, and Venice afterwards, till his death in 

334 



Mid-Victorian Types and Forces 

i860, and Captain Mayne Reid, the contrast of 
whose dress with his face made him something 
of a cross between a Paris houlevardier and one 
of his own prairie freebooters, the heroes of those 
stories that had made him a kind of classic with 
the juvenile public during the first half of the 
Victorian age. He had been called to the Bar 
at the Inner Temple in 1852. The two Fleet 
Street friends whose conversation and example 
impelled him to authorship soon afterwards were 
the two essentially Victorian writers, Edmund 
Yates and G. A. Sala, each a real help to 
Lawrence on his first start. Both these clever 
writers were very well-read men on character- 
istically Victorian lines. They had really studied 
life and literature in all their aspects, and differed 
in nothing more from their twentieth-century suc- 
cessors than in their contemptuous ignorance, in 
all its departments, of the physical science now 
more and more successfully competing with 
letters as a basis of training for those who write. 
The " romance of realism " was the phrase in 
which Lawrence's novels were summed up by his 
most gifted but most admiring disciple and 
imitator, Ouida. She had come powerfully under 
the spell of Lawrence's pen long before she made, 
in the early sixties, his personal acquaintance ; 
this was secured her in the following manner : 

335 



Great Victorians 

" Harry Stone," a tall Yankee with a particularly 
good carriage, having business connections with 
New York, Paris, and London, a pioneer of the 
elderly Transatlantic dandy of later days, had 
seen Miss Ramee in various countries. He had 
also met Lawrence at the Air Street Tavern. 
At one of his rarely given " Star and Garter," 
Richmond, dinners, Ouida gratified one of her 
earlier ambitions by meeting Lawrence . She had 
then written nothing in book shape. Within two 
or three years appeared the first of her novels to 
make its mark, " Strathmore." Something like a 
generation afterwards I heard her say to 
Lawrence, whom she met for the last time on the 
sea -front at Ostend, " Without ' Guy Livingstone ' 
there would have been no ' Strathtnore.' " For 
some time after her fame had fully established 
itself, she valued Lawrence's opinion more than 
that of any other writer. " With all his paganism, 
his questionable morality, and much else of the 
same sort, he has," I heard her once say, " the 
rare power of breathing real life into his 
characters and holding the interest of all who 
read him." Some one in her presence had depre- 
ciated the " Guy Livingstone " guardsmen as 
fancy pictures by one who only knew the Army 
from his own Militia regiment. " And," she at 
once rejoined, " was not the best sketch of every- 

336 



Mid-Victorian Types and Forces 

day Oxford life and people written by a man 
[one Davies with the pen-name of " Cuthbert 
Bede " ] who had lived in no university but Dur- 
ham, and only knew Oxford as a visitor?" A 
little later, during one of her London residences 
at the Langham Hotel, I met at one of her 
" cause ries Intimes, cigarettes permises,'" to quote 
her invitation cards, the then Sir Frederick John- 
stone (died 19 13), Serjeant Ballantine, and 
" 'Harry Stone " himself ; that gentleman was 
openly saluted by the hostess as the early friend 
who, in the way just described, had, without 
knowing it, helped her on the literary road. 

Personally the most amiable, physically the 
most unfortunate of the mid -Victorian writers, 
was Francis Smedley. He had been prevented 
by lameness from going to Westminster School, 
but had been the private pupil of his uncle, a 
clergyman at Chesterton, close to Cambridge. 
Here he picked up a good deal of knowledge, 
ancient and modern, as well as some acquaintance 
with University life, of which he made the most 
in his first novel, immediately and immensely 
successful, " Frank Fairlegh." Many years after 
this I saw him at his house in Regent's Park. 
During the few minutes I was in his company two 
things struck me, first his extreme graciousness 
and gentleness of manner, secondly the feminine 

337 Y 



Great Victorians 

alertness of perception with which Nature seemed 
to have compensated his bodily disability. The 
great masters of Victorian fiction were of course 
in every one's hands during these years. With 
the younger generation of readers now looked 
back upon^ neither Dickens nor Thackeray, 
neither Captain Marryat nor Charles Lever, not- 
withstanding their wider and more enduring 
popularity, was assimilated and became part of 
his readers' being to anything like the same 
extent as the smaller romancists now recalled as 
at once types and forces of their age. Not indeed 
till this second decade of the twentieth century 
has the genius of Dickens, as regards the concep- 
tion of life and drawing of character, to a really 
noticeable degree shown its influence upon a 
novelist of the first order, like Mr. Joseph 
Conrad, And even he, certainly with respect to 
diction and style, owes at least as much to Mr. 
■Henry James as to the author of " David Copper- 
field." Mr. H. G. Wells, in the remarkable series 
including " Tono-Bungay," " The New Machia- 
velli," and " The Passionate Friends," so far as 
he reflects anything that is not entirely himself, 
shows himself no student of Dickens or Thackeray 
and is exclusively the product of the same 
agencies that made George Meredith. 

As writers few men in tone, temper, and 

338 



Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 






general sympathies could differ more than the 
historians J. A. Froude and W. E. H. Lecky. 
When associatingi in the flesh with the rest of their 
kind, the two men displayed many qualities in 
common. Lecky, indeed, gentle and almost 
caressing in manner, his delicate features quiver- 
ing with sensibility, presented a marked contrast 
to Froude's strongly moulded nose, lips, chin, and 
jaw, and, as regards his conversation and manner, 
equally lacked all suspicion of the veiled aggres- 
siveness which, notwithstanding his grave and 
even solemn urbanity, something about Froude 
seemed to suggest. Lecky, a born peacemaker, 
more than once tried secretly to compose the 
quarrels of his contemporaries. His artistic pains 
to illustrate with fresh personal details the rela- 
tions of famous men and women with the move- 
ments, moral, spiritual, and political, of their time, 
gave him a position midway between the picture - 
painting chroniclers and the scientific researchers 
of the later Oxford school — 

Where from alternate tubs 
Stubbs butters Freeman, Freeman butters Stubbs. 

In spite of Thorold Rogers's epigram, no two 
men could be personally more unlike each other. 
The Somerset equestrian, pounding on his stout 
cob through the lanes surrounding his house, 

339 



Great Victorians 

" Somerleaze," Wells, generally enlivened his 
solitary ride by singing at the top of his voice 
somie old cavalier song, as if to let the country- 
side know that he was coming. In private life 
Freeman rather avoided Browning as an affected 
and eccentric fop. In his poetry he only cared 
for the " Cavalier Tunes." 

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, 
Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing, 

was a special favourite, and more often than 
anything else was chanted by him as he pursued 
his lonely way under the shadow of the Mendips. 
Another Browning sentiment, " I was ever a 
fighter," might have also fitted Freeman. In 
most controversies of the time, from the Bul- 
garian atrocities to the morality of fox-hunting, 
he took an active part on platform or with pen, 
keeping himself wiell in evidence on every possible 
occasion. For years, as he put it to a Somer- 
setshire neighbour, in the capacity of Saturday 
Review -er, he was " hammering the books of 
blockheads." On the other hand, Bishop Stubbs, 
of whom the present writer cannot speak too 
appreciatively or gratefully, was always the 
reserved and quiet student, never avoidably 
asserting his opinion or authority, neither in print, 
Parliament, nor private gathering volunteering 
a word that was not really worth saying. 

340 



Mid-Victorian Types and Forces 

" The sailor's rule for grog— three -fourths spirit 
and all the water you add spoils it "—summed up 
Froude's advice, when editing Frasefs Magazine, 
to all contributors. "The closer you pack the 
farther you can go. And you will be the more 
effective if you are vicious in the same proportion 
as you are short." The last very characteristic 
touch contains the whole secret of the great prose 
artist's dealing with his Carlylean material. To 
pass from professed history to^ declared fiction. 

As for the nineteenth -century masters of the 
English novel who lived into my time I can only 
say vldi tantum, except in the case of the first 
Lord Lytton and Anthony Trollope ; to both of 
those memories I have tried at some length to 
do justice elsewhere . Thackeray died shortly after 
my undergraduate days had begun. That my 
eyes ever rested on him was due to Tom Hood, 
son of him who sang " The Song of the Shirt," 
during the years when, fresh from Oxford, he lived 
much in the West of England, and stayed con- 
stantly with his sister, Mrs. Broderip, at Cossing- 
ton Rectory, three or four miles from Bridgwater. 
Hood was standing on the steps of the Clarence 
Hotel in that town, talking to a stranger who 
presently left him, and who, as he afterwards 
told me, was the editor of the Cornhlll, then very 
recently started. The novelist, it seems, thought 

341 



Great Victorians 

of buying a little property then for sale in or near 
a village called Ham, on the spurs of the Quan- 
tock Hills. The purchase was never made, nor, 
from what I afterwards heard, perhaps ever 
seriously entertained, though the great man had 
long liked the neighbourhood, and visited it 
several times in A. W. Kinglake's company. 

Dickens, like Thackeray, was then much in 
request at great country houses, where, however, 
it was so arranged that the two never met. The 
author of " Pickwick " was a difficult guest to 
secure, and all the stories told about his readiness 
to associate at watering-places or elsewhere with 
persons having any kind of handle to their name 
are pure inventions. The first public dinner I 
ever attended was the send-off banquet to 
Dickens under Lord Lytton's presidency in Free- 
masons' Hall, November 2, 1866. The chair- 
man's proposal of his health, the toast of the 
evening, contained amid its compliments some 
words suggesting that Sir Mulberry Hawk and 
Lord Frederick Verisopht were caricatures rather 
than sketches from life, and that the great 
novelist's weakest point, perhaps, might be seen 
in his few delineations of fashionable life and 
its characters. This brought up Dickens himself, 
who, with a perfectly good humour and show of 
indignation, wanted (so far as from memory I 

342 



Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

can recall the exact words ) to know what amazing 
devil had instigated his noble friend to recall in 
connection with the present state of society two 
obsolete characters drawn more than a quarter of 
a century before. 

There were no more breezes inside the building 
that night. At Evans's supper-rooms, whither 
many of the diners soon adjourned, it was differ- 
ent. George Augustus Sala, then at the height 
of his Fleet Street fame, had been one of 
Dickens's discoveries, and had been trained by 
him into a most effective all-round writer. For 
some reason Sala had been dissatisfied with his 
great master's public references to himself. 
Within a few hours of the dinner being over, in 
the cafe part of the supper -room " reserved for 
conversation," he gave, from his own point of 
view, an account of his relations with his chief, 
and of what he held to be that chief's obligation 
to him in the growth of his fame. Dickens, of 
course, was told about the escapade by a little 
bird ; a few minutes later he received through a 
common friend his contributor's expression of 
regret for having said what he had better have 
left unsaid. " Dear George," ran Dickens's 
acknowledgment, "it would of course have been 
better so, but do not think any more about it." 

Dickens's 'brains, I have heard it said, did not 

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Great Victorians 

prove an hereditary possession in his household. 
Not perhaps altogether, but his eldest son's ability 
showed itself in the conduct of Household Words 
after his father's death. That son's eldest 
daughter, Miss Mary Angela Dickens, has shown 
herself in her novels at least as much an instance 
of heredity as was Thackeray's daughter, the late 
Lady Ritchie. Dickens' sixth son, apart from 
his distinction at the Bar, can reproduce, upon 
occasions, the great man's graphic attitude of 
happy phrase. Thus a barrister opposed to him, 
named Willis, was irritating him and the court 
by an incessant and, as it seemed, a preventable 
little cough. At last he quietly remarked, "An 
illustrious relative of mine has immortalized the 
words ' Barkis is willing ' ; perhaps I may be 
allowed in present circumstances to say ' Willis 
is barking.' " The reader, it has been said, 
should be a continuation of the writer. That, 
of course, explained the novelist's success on 
the platform. The principle itself is constantly 
being illustrated by Mr. H. F. Dickens, K.C., 
in the assistance he gives to charities by his 
rendering of "A Christmas Carol " or other 
writings of the same deathless genius. 

I sat only twice at the same table with Dickens ; 
once on the public occasion now recalled, again 
at the historian. Lord Stanhope's, in Grosvenor 

344 



Mid-Victorian Types and Forces 

Place, where he had been asked specially to 
meet Disraeli, who was thus also present. Some 
one had asked the future Lord Beaconsfield whom 
he considered the most eloquent speaker he had 
ever heard. After some little reflection came, in 
a deep tone of sepulchral solemnity, the reply, 
" Daniel Whittle Harvey." A like inquiry was 
presently addressed to Dickens, as to who struck 
him as the best of all after-dinner orators. With- 
out a second's hesitation he answered, " Pro- 
fessor John Wilson " (the " Christopher North " 
of Blackwood's Magazine).^ 

That which chiefly struck a personal stranger 
like myself, as it did many others, in the great 
novelist, was first his power of teaching apt pupils 
the technique of the literary craft ; secondly, the 
contagious influence on them of his own social 
as well as intellectual idiosyncrasies. The effect 
of Dickens's Daily News editing long survived 
not only his connection with the paper but his 
existence. It was not limited to Daily News 

^ The experience on which this opinion rested was, I after- 
wards heard, Wilson's post-prandial welcome to Dickens in the 
Waterloo Rooms, Edinburgh, when the visitor, acknowledging 
the compliment paid to his creative power, unveiled by a single 
autobiographic touch his own innermost self. " I feel as if I 
stood among old friends whom I had intimately known and 
highly valued. I feel as if the death of the fictitious creatures 
in whom you may have been kind enough to express an interest 
deepens friendship, just as real afflictions do in actual life." 

345 



Great Victorians 

writers, but was shown by Dickens men like 
Edmund Yates equally in his Morning Star con- 
tributions and the earlier conduct of his very 
successful venture, the World. Dickens, as one 
did not need John Forster's biography to show, 
was in the habit of calling friends like Forster 
and others into his confidence, not less on the 
development of the plot and personalities of his 
novels than the management of his magazines. 
Edmund Yates did exactly the same, sometimes 
with consequences less than just to him'self . For 
when I first knew him' in his comparatively early 
stage of novelist, Mrs. Cashel Hoey was a regular 
figure at his councils of friends. Herself an 
expert in fiction, she suggested many improve- 
ments in the stories which he used to read aloud 
specially. Hence it went about that " Broken 
to Harness," " Black Sheep," and others were 
not really by their reputed author, but by his 
Egeria. This was pure fable, because Yates, 
with his really fine brains and trained powers of 
observation, always showed himself quick enough 
to take a hint, but had never the slightest need 
of looking to other brickfields for his clay. 

With the exception of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, 
Yates was the adroitest performer in the 
Dickensian style, not only of writing but of 
platform speaking and private conversation. 

346 



Mid- Victorian Types and Forces 

Like his master, one of the most hospitable of 
men, he had a curious fondness for reminding the 
world of his existence. The guests at his 
Thames -side piarties used to say that their host 
would have enjoyed himself more than he visibly 
did had the steam launch on which he feted them 
so pleasantly been preceded by some pilot craft 
blazoned with the announcement, " Yates is 
coming." As a notoriety lover, however, he was 
outdone by his journalistic colleague first, his 
rival afterwards, Henry Labouchere. Many 
of his best stories were told against himself for 
no other reason than that of heightening their 
sensational interest. ^ 

The Thamfes during the early eighties was the 
most cosmopolitan of streams, for in the Twicken- 
ham district one left the Laboucherian gatherings 
at Pope's Villa to be sure of meeting persons 
perhaps more instructive, and often not less 

^ These anecdotes were chiefly burlesques of the commercial 
success that had transformed his father and uncle from mere men 
of business into territorial magnates. During his early House of 
Commons days, one of his constituents came up to him in the 
Lobby full of congratulatory admiration for a speech he had just 
heard his father deliver in the House of Lords. " My father ! " 
rejoined " Labby." " You have relieved me very much. For my 
father has been dead twenty years ; the family were getting 
anxious about him, and would be glad to know he is in such 
a good place." (The supposed father was, of course, the uncle, 
Henry Labouchere the first.) 

347 



Great Victorians 

amusing, at Grant-Duff's Orleans House. Here 
the great object of the host's oratorical admira- 
tion, the Spanish statesman and speaker, Emilio 
Cast61ar, happened at last to be paying a visit 
on his way hom^e after a little tour in Ireland, 
especially Galway. The town of Galway itself 
has never lost the signs of its Spanish associa- 
tions since the defeat of the Great Armada at 
the end of the sixteenth century. Its mayor, at 
the time of Castelar's visit, prided himself on the 
Spanish blood in his veins and his command of 
the Spanish language. At a dinner to Castelar 
he insisted on proposing the guest's health in 
what he considered the Castilian tongue. The 
illustrious visitor sat silent and impassive 
throughout the performance ; at its close he 
got up and, in the little English he could com-- 
mand, expires sed his deep regret that he had not 
been long enough in the British Isles to under- 
stand the words of the gentlem'an who had just 
sat down, or to thank his good friend, as he 
should like to have done, in his native tongue. 



348 



CHAPTER XI 

ROYALTIES, COURTIERS, AND STATESMEN 
AT WORK 

How and when the country first knew the Prince Consort — 
The opinion formed of him by his representative contem- 
poraries — His services to the Duchy of Cornwall during the 
minority of the Prince of Wales — His Cornwall and Devon- 
shire excursions — Royalty and Devonshire cream at a Dart- 
side vicarage — The Prince Consort's legacy to his son and 
grandson — Greek art and literature at Marlborough House 
— King Edward VII as an Oxford and Cambridge under- 
graduate — " Oh ! ruddier than the cherry " in Canterbury 
Quad — Greek lexicon-making on the eve of the Prince's 
residence — H. G. Liddell, of Christ Church — Robert Scott, 
of Balliol — Oxford and Cambridge influences on the culture 
of the coming King — J. E. Thorold Rogers on the Oxford 
Dictionary — The Royal fashion of hard work healthily 
infectious — How Lord Goschen mastered the art and 
details of naval administration in a fortnight — Lord 
Hartington in his shirt-sleeves at Devonshire House ad- 
ministering India, to the accompaniment of the Sunday 
morning church bells, with the occasional refreshment of 
a visitor and of the Binomial Theorem — Statesmen of the 
Churchill line, from Bismarck to Winston — How Uncle 
Salisbury and the great Elizabethan Cecils live again in 
Mr. Arthur Balfour — The first Marquis of Abergavenny — 
How, with Lord Beaconsfield and Markham Spofforth as 
his " man-of-all-work " he recreated the Conservative Party 
349 



Great Victorians 

and brought it to victory in 1874 — The first Lord Burnham, 
being also the first of all modern newspaper men — The first 
Lord Rothschild of fact and fiction — Lord Rothschild and 
Lord Randolph Churchill on double surnames. 

Throughout the earlier period covered by this 
volume, English attention, to a degree not 
perhaps now easily realized, fixed itself on the 
Prince Consort. By an accident, now to be re- 
called, I once found myself in his presence. 
My real knowledge of him came from well-known 
men, especially in the South and West of 
England, often as the Queen's ministers in atten- 
dance at Balmoral or Windsor, and at other times 
his colleagues in the various undertakings which, 
more than anything else, gradually enabled the 
country to set a true value on his worth. The 
best personal records of the Prince are the 
addresses of condolence to his widow from the 
local bodies to which he had been a familiar 
figure, and various distinguished individuals to 
whom he often talked without restraint. Such 
opinions as these I was much in the way of 
hearing on their first expression, and, as they 
are not without permanent interest, may briefly 
recall now. He had died at Windsor just before 
midnight on the 14th of December, 1861. By 
the early spring of the next year the best known 
Englishmen of their generation, speaking some- 
times as county Lords-Lieutenant, sometimes as 

350 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

Chairmen of Quarter Sessions, took the first step 
towards supplying from their own experience 
authentic materials for a lifehke portrait of the 
Prince. The points on which the best informed 
of these dwelt were the intellectual force of his 
character and his faculty of self-restraint. No 
one illustrated these traits with more graceful 
effect than the fourth Earl of Carnarvon, in the 
County Hall at Winchester. " It is the Prince to 
the life," was the oomment of the Laureate, then 
plain Alfred Tennyson, as I stood at his side in 
that building, intent upon each touch of the 
word picture. Prince Albert had first visited 
the West of England during a tour with the 
Queen. Afterwards he personally examined the 
estates of the Duchy of Cornwall, and their 
management by the Council responsible for them 
during the minority of his eldest son. His 
Cornish visits were sometimes varied by excur- 
sions into Devonshire. While on one of these, 
chance brought him to a Vicarage in that portion 
of the county watered by the river Dart. The 
stream reminded him, in parts, of the Rhine, 
in its sudden bends and picturesque convolutions 
from the " Anchor Stone " to Dartington. On 
its banks he initiated himself into the mysteries 
of Devonshire cream -making, not without an 
idea, as he said, that the rich Berkshire pastures 
might make it possible to reproduce the industry 

351 



Great Victorians 

on the royal demesnes. Those with whom, in 
this part of the world, the Prince talked found 
him unaffected and agreeable if the subject really, 
interested him, and saw nothing whatever of the 
curt pomposity and the much lied about petty 
Prussian despotism, making, as was said, the lives 
of so many Court ladies a burden to them. The 
way in which I once found myself in the Prince's 
presence was as follows. I was staying near 
Totnes with a family friend, a great authority on 
the geology of the whole country between the 
Dart and Land's End. One day, when about 
tOi sit down to luncheon, we were all fluttered by 
the rumour of a royal invasion as possible. The 
Queen's hlisband had already entered the village 
and enquired for the Vicarage, with further 
questions about the dairy farm and its grounds. 
The Vicar himself met the illustrious visitor 
on the front lawn, upon which the dining- 
room windows opened . Before any of us, I think, 
knew exactly how it had happened, " Albert the 
Good " had seated himself at the table before a 
knife and plate. The stony silence in which 
at first we sat seemed painfully long ; but we 
knew it was a high offence to take the con- 
versational initiative in such august company. 
At last one of the daughfers of the house, a 
bright, high-spirited girl, decided that the time 

352 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

had come to break the ice. Would his Royal 
Highness take some more clotted cream with his 
raspberry and currant tart? We were all, I 
remember, relieved to find a violation of Court 
etiquette had been taken so graciously. The dairy 
farm was duly visited before his Royal Highness 
went his way, as we afterwards heard, to Mount 
Edgcumbe. Here the story of the little incident 
just recorded had preceded him. The insight, 
however, acquired by him into the local farm 
industries came as a surprise even to those whose 
experience of his methods in the Duchy of Corn- 
wall business had acquainted them with his rare 
aptitude for accurately observing and mastering 
fresh details, whether in great matters or small. 
The present, the fourth, Earl of Mount Edg- 
cumbe, then Lord Valletort, had not himself a 
place in the Council of the Duchy of Cornwall 
till 1889. As regards the Prince, however, he 
had other opportunities of noticing in all the 
varied activities of his station the union of moral 
and intellectual qualities which formed his dis- 
tinctive characteristic, and which those who knew 
him best aptly indicated by the single word 
" judgment." This was the faculty, as those 
surrounding him saw, that, to quote from memory 
the conversation of Lord Carnarvon, Charles 
Kingsley, and Bishop Wilberforoe, " enabled the 

353 z 



Great Victorians 

Prince in the conscious plenitude of his own 
mental strength to tie down and restrain that 
vigour to the strict and careful observance of 
constitutional practice and duty,," 

Prince Albert's power of withdrawing his mind 
from the distractions of daily life and fixing it 
on new and complicated details till he had 
thoroughly mastered them was^ as I can say from 
practical experience, fully bequeathed by him to 
his eldest son ; it may, indeed, now be con- 
sidered the family gift of the reigning House. 
During the summer oi 1885 there appeared in the 
Fortnightly Review, then conducted by me, an 
article by thfe famous Greek scholar R. C. Jebb, 
advocating the foundation at Athens of a school 
of classical studies, that might also, to some 
extent, be a social centre for cultivated English- 
men on their travels in Eastern Europe. The 
then Prince of Wales was brother-in-law to the 
King of Greece, and for other reasons, im- 
mediately to be explained, was predisposed to 
take an active interest in the project. The good 
offices of Sir Francis, now Viscount, Knollys 
secured his attention to the Eortnightly article. 
With his accustomed kindness he gave more than 
one interview to Sir R. C. Jebb and myself, 
receiving at the last of these the further facts 
and figures supplementar,^ to the printed matter, 

354 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

and fully setting forth the origin, the progress, 
and the proposed future organization of the 
idea. As a result he convened a meeting at 
Marlborough House. This was attended by, the 
most distinguished representatives of State, 
Church, scholarship, and learning. The Heir- 
apparent opened the proceedings with an account 
of their object, its requirements, difficulties, and 
the international ajdvantages not unlikely to attend 
it. Jebb was called upwDn to elucidate a few 
points, not, as he was constrained at the outset 
to remark, an easy task, because his Royal 
Highness had studied the data pressed before 
him so thoroughly^ and had assimilated them so 
completely, as practically to have exhausted the 
subject in his own remarks. That would have 
been a noticeable performance for any of the 
busy and preoccupied personages at the 
Marlborough House gathering to have accom- 
plished after twoi or three days' preparation. 
Achieved by one having so few hours or minutes 
to call his own, in the height of the London 
season, it formed a feat extraordinarily significant 
of his power of intellectual concentration. 

The Prince's prompt felicity in handling the 
subject may be explained in part by his frequent 
conversations with some of those who were 
among the most picturesque or prominent per- 

355 



Great Victorians 

sonages on the Isis during his short residence 
in the place, not his contemporaries but the 
representatives of an older generation. Of the 
former, one, then Smith Barry of Christ Church 
(now Lord Barrymore), lingered on at Oxford 
or frequently revisited it in my time. His 
intimacy with the future Edward VII began after 
he had " gone down," and according to the old 
story, grew out of his horse in Rotten Row 
having cannoned against the Heir-apparent and, 
indeed, upset him. The chief member of the 
peerage at Oxford with the Prince was the Duke 
of Hamilton, then a lusty, red-faced, red-haired 
youth, not taken as seriously as he might have 
wished by his fellow -undergraduates of title. 
These, indeed, had a way, little to his taste, of 
serenading him at his rooms near Canterbury 
Gate with improvised instruments of music to 
the accompaniment of the old English catch, 
" Oh ! ruddier than the cherry." 

The most intellectually impressive among 
Oxford residents in the Prince's time, as they 
continued to be several years later in mine, were 
H. G. Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, A. P. 
Stanley (not Dean of Westminster till 1863), 
Robert Scott, not then superseded in the Balliol 
mastership by Jowett, Goldwin Smith, J . E . 
Thorold Rogers and Robinson Duckworth^ after- 
wards Canon of Wiestminster. Among all these 

356 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

tihe future King became far the best known to 

Goldwin Smith, then Regius Professor of History, 

whose tall, dai'k figure, as he rode his tired horse 

slowly over Magdalen Bridge and dismounted 

at University College steps, may have reminded 

the Prince as well as others of Don Quixote 

steering the exhausted Rosinante to the stable 

after a day's knight-errantry among the Canta- 

brian mountains. Occasionally too, before he 

" went down," the Prince caught a glimpse of 

the gifted Wadham ^roup, whose most famous 

member, Frederic Harrison, had not then 

become identified with the philosophy of Auguste 

Comte, but whose Radicalism, before he left 

Oxford, had been much influenced by Bridges, 

Lushington, W. L. Newman, Bowen of Balliol, 

by Miss Martineau, and in Italy by Mazzini. 

Whatever the effect on Oxford of Harrison's 

democratic ideas or speculative enthusiasms, no 

one doubts that the clear and simple brilliancy of 

his prose style educated the best Oxford bends 

for the greater part of two generations. From 

Liddell the Prince heard how the famous Greek 

Lexicon^ had been written in conjunction with 

^ People still repeated then the doggerel about the great 
work : — 

This Lexicon now by Liddell and Scott, 
Some of it's good and some of it's not. 
Solve me, I pray you, this difficult riddle — 
What of it's Scott and what of it's LiddpU ? 

357 



Great Victorians 

Scott. The modus operandi, as described by 
the Dean to the Prinoej was this : Every day, 
between 5 and 6 p.m., Liddell would come to 
BalHol from Christ Church, and at once make for 
Scott's rooms in Potter's buildings. There the 
two worked together till midnight. The work 
had begun in 1833; after ten years, the first 
edition came out in 1843. ^^t the fifth edition, 
really donstituting the Volume as it is known 
to-day, did not appear till eighteen years later, 
1 86 1. With Duckworth, the pleasantest and 
most polished of Oxford courtiers, the Prince met 
not only Goldwin Smith' but Thorold Rogers, some 
of whose pungent criticisms he never forgot . The 
latest, however, and perhaps the best, of Rogers's 
good things was reserved till a much later date, 
being called forth by the question asked him : 
" What would Samuel Johnson have said had 
he been foretold of his lexicon being edited by 
a Scotsman?" "His words," replied Rogers, 
" would have been to this effect : ' Sir, to be 
facetious it is not necessary to be indecent.* " 
The Prince, it has been seen, owed his 
introduction to Hellenic archeology or art to 
the personal influences under which he came in 
his undergraduate days . At Oxford he had been 
disappointed at hearing less than he had expected 
about the old Greek paintings. At Cambridge, 

358 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

however, he had learned from Charles Kingsley, 
then a Professor, something definite about Greek 
and Byzantine architecture and statuary. His 
acquaintance with the Cambridge Kingsley and 
the Oxford Bishop Wilberforce grew in intimacy 
until their deaths. They were both constant 
visitors at Sandringham, and were frequently 
consulted by their host about his sons. They 
each formed the same opinion of the younger, 
the future George V, and foresaw at a very early 
age the progressive growth of the qualities which 
have since distinguished alike the sovereign and 
his reign. Heredity is a word not so often on 
the lips of men in those days as it has since 
become, but in conversation, specially with the 
future Dean Stanley, Kingsley and Wilberforce 
both spoke of the then Prince George's mental 
ballast as in the first place a heritage from his 
grandfather. 

Such an equilibrium, they agreed, will descend 
as a Saxe-Coburg bequest to the Roy^-l posterity 
in the same way that successive generations 
have bequeathed toi each other the cleverness 
of the Plantagenets or that the Royal physi- 
ognomy of to-day shows the fullness on the 
right side of the lower face which is an 
inheritance from the Stuarts. Concerning the 
moral attributes reviewed by these shrewd judges 

359 



Great Victorians 

of character, as it was with the Prince Consort's 
son and grandson, so it is with the Prince of 
Wales of to-day. Unwearied drudgery in details, 
it was a Victorian Court saying, marked all the 
Royal Family from the Queen downward. " The 
Duke of Cambridge," once said to me General 
Macdonald (" Rim " Macdonald), " is the hardest 
worker in all the Army, and (let him do things 
in his own way) the most successful." The 
Duke's description of a nineteenth and twentieth 
century sovereign—" the nation's universal and 
permanent Secretary of State "—was sometimes 
on King Edward's lips ; it will probably not be 
strange to his successor. 

Throughout the Victorian age, naturally more 
than in earlier periods of our political history. 
Parliament men for the most part made their 
earliest mark, not by the excellence of their set 
speeches or even their skill in debate, but by 
their thoroughness in the mastery at short notice 
of complicated subjects and branches of public 
business entirely new to them. Two instances 
of this during the Gladstonian period especially 
impressed the Court as well as the country. 
During the second week of March 1871 the 
future Lord Goschen, a complete stranger to 
the department, became First Lord of the 
Admiralty. Two or three weeks later he ex- 

360 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

plained the naval estimates in a speech of two 
hours, so clear, convincing, and so skilfully 
arranged that the men who had heard Peel's 
and Gladstone's Budgets murmured their praise, 
and that the Duke of Edinburgh, who, with his 
eldest brother, had come to St. Stephen's for 
the occasion, congratulated the speaker in the 
lobby. The other instance to be mentioned was 
of an entirely different kind, though not less 
striking in its way. A month later, March 30th, 
Sir Charles Dilke, then a young man of twenty- 
eight, independent Radical Member for Chelsea, 
brought in a motion condemning the Liberal 
Government for agreeing to the Black Sea 
Conference under the conditions which then 
existed. Each successive point of the speech 
was strengthened by dates and quotations that 
only a consummate master of his subject could 
have handled without coming to grief. On this 
occasion, too, the future Edward VII had taken 
his place in the Peers' Gallery. His comment on 
the speech showed alike the closeness of his 
attention and the thorough competence of his 
opinion : "It comes too late to be a parlia- 
mentary success, but it marks out the man who 
made it as an international critic destined to rise 
high in his party and in the House." Lord 
Goschen, first introduced to the Prince at the 

361 



Great Victorians 

Duke of Fife's dinner-table, made no pretence 
of being himself a Gladstonian. As he often 
put it, he saw in his chief one intended by Nature 
less for a statesman than a poet and perhaps 
theologian. Lord Goschen, however, resembled 
Gladstone in his gift of turning private secretaries 
and other understrappers into independent poli- 
ticians of the first order. He performed that 
feat most signally in the case of Lord Milner, 
whose brilliant reputation so dazzled the Balliol 
of his day that it could not fully see the full 
promise of Mr. Asquith, the young man whom 
Jowett predicted would go far because he knew 
exactly what he wanted and resolved to get 
it, but of whom Mr. Gladstone, when asked 
whether he would ever lead the party, shook 
his head and significantly murmured, " Too 
forensic." 

The two members of the Gladstonian Cabinet 
who had most of each other's confidence were 
Lord Goschen and Lord Hartington. The future 
ninth Duke of Devonshire tempered his aristo- 
cratic Whig instincts with some popular sen- 
timents, or at least phrases, faithfully reflecting 
a good-humoured contempt for those not bom 
into his own governing class. During the 
eighties something was said about closing the 
Pa-rk pn Sundays to different kinds of meetings. 

363 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

** Really," was the then Lord Hartington's 
deliverance, " I don't see how lyou can open the 
Park every week-day to a mob of well-dressed 
people and shut it up in the face of a less well- 
dressed mob on Sundays." As leader in the 
Commons from 1875, Hartington was far more of 
a political grand seigneur than he ever seemed 
after coming to his full title. During the pre- 
ducal days, as seven o'clock approached a liveried 
horseman was seen by an expectant crowd gal- 
loping out of Parliament Square towards Picca- 
dilly. It was one of the Cavendish retainers 
hurrying to Devonshire House with the news 
that the Marquis might be expected home any 
moment for his dinner. 

On his becoming, in 1883, Secretary for India, 
Sir Louis Mallet and the other permanent officials 
spoke of it as a calamity that the control of the 
department should pass to a man of pleasure and 
a sportsman like the Duke of Devonshire's eldest 
son. Very shortly they found that their new 
chief was also' the hardest worker whom they had 
known for many a long day. Every Sunday 
morning the Secretary of State, always in his 
shirt -sleeves, settled down to his papers, and inter- 
viewed successively those of his staff whom he 
wished to see and any others whom he cared to 
receive. Amongst those I happened, in the year 

363 



Great Victorians 

1885, to be one. I found him in his Piccadilly 
home, in his room on the ground floor a little 
to the right after entering. A deputation of some 
kind had just left him ; he seemed to be em- 
ploying the short interval between his reception 
of visitors and reading of papers by scribbling 
on one piece of paper and occasionally munch- 
ing other pieces in his mouth. " I was," he ex- 
plained, laying down his pen when he saw 
me, " amusing myself by trying to write out the 
Binomial Theorem ; I think I have forgotten 
something ; perhaps you can put it right." I 
regretted to say I could not . 

Professor Liveing, who filled the Cambridge 
Chair of Chemistry, somewhat Lord Hartington's 
senior, once told me that the head of the India 
Office, as he then was, had a true Yorkshireman's 
head, not only for everything which concerned 
the horse, but for facts, figures, and puzzling 
details of every kind. His tutor at Trinity, John 
Cooper, afterwards Vicar of Kendal and Arch- 
deacon of Westmorland, bore emphatic testimony 
in the same direction. " But for his station, 
his wealth, and his countless preoccupied in- 
terests, there was scarcely any distinction in 
the mathematical tripos," said this gentleman, 
" which Lord Hartington's very exceptional brain 
power, scientific aptitude, extraordinary power of 

364 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

self-adaptation, and of concentrated industry 
might not have placed within his reach." 

The branch of the public service on which 
Lord Hartington left the most enduring mark 
is the Army. In 1888 his commission on naval 
and military administration suggested that the 
control of the Army, divided between the Secre- 
tary of State and the Commander-in-Chief, should 
be replaced by the supreme authority of a single 
Cabinet minister. Even then, however, fifteen 
years had to pass before, in 1904, Lord Esher's 
Commdttee endorsed the recommendation. It then 
received full effect. The Commandership-in- 
Chief ceased to exist ; a Chief of the General 
Staff ruled in his stead. The official whose name 
immediately connects itself with this change, Lord 
Esher, had been for seven years (1878-85) Lord 
Hartington's private secretary, and a character- 
istic product of Eton and Cambridge culture, as 
well as a finished link connecting the Court and 
courtiership of the Victorian age with those of 
the two reigns that have followed since. 

Among the great political Victorians, the first 
Lord Goschen outlived Mr. Gladstone by nine 
years. Lord Hartington, as Duke of Devonshire, 
by ten. " The old man in a hurry," as, in refer- 
ence to Home Rule, Lord Randolph Churchill 
called the Liberal leader, survived Churchill 

365 



Great Victorians 

himself, but did not live to see his son repre- 
senting his third constituency. ^ Prince Bismarck 
had something to say about the difficulty with 
which he had trained himself from being merely 
a " bundle of nerves " into the " man of blood 
and iron." In some respects Mr. Winston 
Churchill began where his father left off and 
showed a knowledge and a solidity with which 
Lord Randolph never troubled himself, if for 
no other reason than his not thinking it suitable 
to the character in which he first made his public 
mark .2 Whether, in achieving this development, 
he may or may not have consciously contended 
against any of the Bismarckian difficulties, 
among his father's contemporaries there are 
some who will recollect his early days at a pre- 
paratory school near Brighton. From this, one 
half -holiday, he was brought, as a very small 

* Winston Churchill became M.P. for Oldham in 1900, North- 
West Manchester in 1906, and Dundee in 1908. 

" "Blue Book speeches," he said, "are not in my line, and 
if I tried them nobody would attend to them." Randolph 
Churchill, however, had great power of getting up a subject, as 
he showed when Chancellor of the Exchequer, after having once 
mastered the mystery of decimal points. Possessing an excep- 
tionally good memory, he had never been much of a reader, and 
only made the acquaintance of Disraeli's novels in the latter part 
of his short life, about the same time that a chance quotation 
from that work made him brush up his half-forgotten Greek 
enough to read in the original a good deal of Aristotle's 
" Politics." 

366 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

boy, by the late Sir Henry Drummond Wolff 
for lunch to the now extinct Orleans Club at 
Brighton. He said nothing till, at the end of 
the meal, his father's friends engaged him in 
a little conversation. Then, in tones surpris- 
ingly deep for one of such tender age, and with 
something oracular in his manner, he fixed our 
attention by these words : " They all tell me 
I am a remarkably nervous child." 

Circumstances quickened and prolonged the 
rivalry inevitable between two men of the same 
age, antecedents, and parliamentary standing as 
Randolph Churchill and Mr. Arthur Balfour. 
Of these competitors the former had scarcely 
passed away when his son stepped forth to renew 
an hereditary antagonism and to take up the 
dropped stitches of his father's career. The 
Mr. Balfour of those days has been altogether 
outgrovioi by the Admiralty First Lord of the 
existing Coalition, a Balfour in name only, in 
breadth of shoulders, thickness ,of frame, 
heaviness of jaw, and proportions of forehead a 
Cecil marvellously recalling, not only his illus- 
trious uncle, but that relative's Elizabethan 
ancestors as from their picture frames they look 
down upon the neo - Georgian Hatfield. Mr. 
Gladstone's posthumous influence upon the new 
Georgian age has been personified less in the 

367 



Great Victorians 

Palace of Westminster than in its official environs . 
Of the two Treasur,y officials most expert in 
Gladstone's methods and most after his heart, 
after Lord Welby had gone, Sir Charles Rivers 
Wilson (since dead) for a time connected the 
finance of the old exclusive order with that of 
the new democratic regime, under which Bonar 
Law, Chamberlain, and Simon will hereafter be 
looked back upon as the founders of political 
families that are, under George V, what the Whit- 
breads and the Rathbones were under Queen 
Victoria, or had been during the two previous 
reigns. Both Mr. Gladstone's old pupils and 
assistants, the controllers respectively of the 
London County Council's Exchequer and the 
National Debt Office, outlived by nearly a year 
another well-known representative of the High 
Secretariat. Sir Bruce Maxwell -Set on, the 
kindest, gentlest, most widely known and be- 
loved man of his day,, had served the War Office 
from early youth under many chiefs. His best 
known " master " was the Marquis of Ripon. 
He himself will best be remembered for the 
hospitalities which acquainted many of his 
guests for the first time that nineteenth -century 
London possessed public dining-places, not of 
the most advertised kind, requiring only a little 
encouragement to place them in the same rank 

368 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

for artistic cuisine as the choicest restaurants of 
the Palais Royal or the Boulevards. 

While these pages have been in process of 
virriting two typically Victorian figures have dis- 
appeared. The first Marquis of Abergavenny 
connected the tw^entieth century, not only with 
its predecessor, but with the fifteenth ; Warwick 
the Kingmaker's collateral descendant, he per- 
sonified in these later days something of the 
aims, the ideas, and the bearing of his mediaeval 
ancestor. He also presented in many respects 
a close parallel to an earlier political Victorian 
of noble birth, Lord George Bentinck. Like 
Bentinck, the Lord Nevill of 1868 gave up sport 
to promote Conservative reaction. The son of 
an Evangelical clergyman, the fourth earl of his 
line. Lord Abergavenny, always disapproved Mr. 
Gladstone 'scarcely less as a ritualist than as a 
Conservative renegade. The Conservative defeat 
in the General Election of November 1868 did 
not in the least disoourage him. He had failed 
to whip up men enough to avert it. The more 
earnestly, therefore, he took in hand the work 
of neutralizing its results. The first thing was 
to ascertain the true trend of political feeling 
among the industrial and lower middle -classes 
of town and country. As for the latter, his vast 
possessions in South England and South 

369 A A 



Great Victorians 

Wales had already given him the information he 
wanted . 

In London, for the first time in his life, he 
took innumerable omnibuses in various directions, 
and rubbed shoulders with the man in the street, 
whterever he oould find him, for the purpose of 
discovering his real feelings in matters of Church 
and State. At the music-halls visited by him 
for the same purpose he saw a little broad- 
sheet, the " Glowworm," uniting some features 
of a newspaper withl those of a play-bill. Why 
should it not become a Conservative organ with 
slashing leaders against the enemy ? The present 
writer, then beginning his journalistic course, 
was one of those personally acquainted at that 
time with Lord Abergavenny's notion of the 
union between press and party. These things 
were for the masses. For the classes there 
were the Carlton, with its younger namesake. 
In succession to Samuel Montagu (" the little 
squire "), the chief of the Kentish gang became 
the good genius and the universal Providence of 
both. He cemented and broadened the alliance 
of pleasant fellowship with constitutional ortho- 
doxy. As a consequence, the two clubs were 
largely instrumental in eliminating from the social 
mixture known as " the polite world " any Liberal 
leaven. The final triumph came at the appeal 

370 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

to the constituencies in 1874. The true 
organizer of victoryi had not been the fourteenth 
Earl of Derbiy, or even Benjamin Disraeli him- 
self, but Lord Abergavenny, with his man of 
business, the Conservative election manager, 
Markham Spofforth, and the two Carlton Clubs. 
Lord Abergavenny died on the loth of 
December, 1 9 1 5 . Just a month later there passed 
away another expert in the estimate and forma- 
tion of public opinion, also the pioneer of the 
penny daily Press. Edwarid Lawson, the first 
Lord Bumham, inherited from his consummately 
clever father an almost unerring insight into the 
popular mind and taste, as well as an instinctive 
knotwledge of what the new public would read 
and write. Thus, like his son, he knew the sort 
of " copy " he wanted almost from the hand in 
which it was written. No general reflections, 
or pseudo-philosophic platitudes, plenty of good 
arresting names, with three paragraphs, neither 
more nor less, for every leader. These were old 
Mr. Levy's notions of an effective article. Next 
year ( 1 9 1 7 ) will witness the centenary of a 
magazine, Blackwood's, that, far more than any 
other single cause, has influenced newspaper 
editors and their sheets from Delane and The 
Times to the Lawsons and the Daily. Telegraph. 
Delane's personal intimate and contemporaiiyj 

371 



Great Victorians 

John Blackwood, the son of William, '* Maga's " 
founder, made the periodical the best thing of its 
kind ever known. " I don't," he said, " engage 
the regular literary man. He is apt to be too 
maniere . I look out for a man who, say a Dean, 
has gone in for bee culture for an article— never 
mind the writing, we will see to that, so long 
as it has facts. Or I come across a cavalry 
ofhcer who shoots big game in the Carpathians 
and do the same with him. So I get the freshness 
and knowledge which attract and keep readers." 
Delane among journalists, being the earliest in 
the field, first dealt with his occasional articles in 
the Blackwood manner. He was followed and 
soon surpassed by Lord Burnham, who made the 
Telegraph, not only the first news-sheet of the 
day, but a trustworthy storehouse of topical 
tidings about the persons and things dominating 
at the moment the popular mind|, whether it 
happened to be the interpretation of cuneiform 
characters, Dr. Livingstone's whereabouts, or the 
Marquis of Bute's disposition of his heart. ^ 
Always in the van of journalistic enterprise, Lord 

* On the 15th of October, 1900, the Daily Telegraph an- 
nounced that the heart of the late Lord Bute was being con- 
veyed from Cumnock House to the Mount of Olives, after, as 
it was shown from several instances, a fashion once much 
observed by the Scottish nobility. 

372 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

Bumham had rnothing in comimon with some 
other newspaper peers of his time, because he 
held and acted on the principle that a newspaper's 
business was to give the earliest, fullest, most 
exclusive information on all subjects in the best 
literary, form, not to influence markets, or to vent 
personal spites, by publishing one day what might 
call for contradiction on the next, or to influence 
markets by the pure fabrications which are the 
chosen opportunity of " bulls or bears," as the 
case may be. 

Before finishing his course at London 
University, Edward Lawson had come under the 
personal influence of a really fine old English 
gentleman and ecclesiastic, Dr. Richard William 
Jelf, from 1844 Principal of King's College. 
To know him was itself a liberal education, and 
through him Edward Lawson made many other 
acquaintances of the same sort. The Dailj^j 
Telegraph had nO: sooner become the earliest of 
London journals sold for the twelfth part of a 
shilling, than it recorded its sense of Gladstone's 
services in making the penny Press possible by 
recognizing him as the greatest party leader and 
most powerful instrument of legislation who had 
appeared since Peel, Lord Burnham, however, 
had always shown a keen sense of literary form 
as well as of his time's tendencies. From its 

373 



Great Victorians 

beginnings toi the present day the articles in his 
newspaper have never failed to combine with 
political shrewdness the regard for diction and 
style that first, more than half a century ago, 
gave its writers the same sort of personal dis- 
tinction as was then generally associated with 
contributorship to the Saturday Review. 

What is known in the scientific vocabulary as 
" persistence of type " has shown itself very 
noticeably in other branches of the intellectual 
industry whose head Lord Burnham became. 
To take two very different journalistic instances. 
The Spectator still combines the well-informed 
statesmanship with the strength of style and 
clearness of arrangement with which it was fi^rst 
endowed by its two nineteenth-century re-creators, 
Meredith Townshend and R. H. Hutton. Vanity 
Fair also still preserves in its personal 
comments the terse pungency that its founder, 
Mr. T. G. Bowles, first imparted to it, and that 
some predicted would finally disappear when that 
accomplished master of concise and vigorous 
phrase had withdrawn his pen. 

The first Lord Rothschild died in the early 
summer of 1 9 1 5 ; his last public words were 
about the financial effects of the war on the 
entire Continent. The second Lord Rothschild 
took as one of his earliest themes for a 

374 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

Buckinghamshire speech the consequences of the 
war to labour. Whatever the future develop- 
ments of New Court, the qualities that marked 
its establishment at the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century; have never been wanting since. 
Three years before Queen Victoria's accession 
the Riothschild hospitalities at Gunnersbury, be- 
came a feature in London society. About the 
same time, too, Baron Lionel's younger brother, 
Meyer, began the entertainments at Mentmore 
which brought together all that was most 
representative in the cosmopolitanism which the 
polite world of the British Isles had already 
begun to reflect, and whose influence upon it 
is likely to increase rather than diminish. 
Dealing in uncertain values has been described 
as a Jewish instinct, and as explaining the interest 
of successive Rothschild generations in the Turf. 
But before the colours of the two brothers, 
Lionel and Meyer, were known on the racecourse, 
the men who owned them were country squires 
of the first order. In each case their facial 
features were those of their race. Both, however, 
and especially Meyer, had all the tastes and not 
a little of the manner of the Midland territorial - 
ists among whom they passed so much of their 
life, and who rode regularly to Baron Meyer's 
stag -hounds in the Aylesbury district. What- 

375 



Great Victorians 

ever could improve the breed of horses on their 
Midland estates had the support and encourage- 
ment of both brothers. They were landlords 
first and sportsmen afterwards . In other respects 
the Rothschild aptitude and taste have de- 
scended from thie earlier to the later members 
of the house. Baron James of Paris (1792- 
1868) was much in Disraeli's mind when he 
drew the Sidonia of " Coningsby." Among his 
many clever sayings one is not too familiar for 
mention. During the disturbances of 1848 he 
saw from his house of business on the Seine a 
gang of noisy. Socialists making for his front 
door. Another moment and he faced them on 
the threshold. " Gentlemen," he said, " there 
is no need for violence. Let your leaders come 
in and arrange the affair with me." Presently 
the Baron opened the interview with : , " You 
desire an equal division of property throughout 
the whole of Franide. I agree. To forward your 
views I have prepared for your inspection a 
statement of my means, amounting as they do 
to such and such a figure. Divide that by, the 
total population ; you will see it exactly works 
out at two sous apiece. Allow me, therefore, 
the pleasure of now handing over to you your 
share." In a somewhat similar vein the late 

376 



Royalties, Courtiers, and Statesmen 

Lord Rothschild, hearing a gilded youth's con- 
temptuous remark about a halfpenny,, said, " That 
ypung man does not seem to know much about 
large transactions . ' ' 

The trio of brothers Gontrolling New Court 
up to the fifteenth year of the present century 
had severally identified themselves with the chief 
pursuits and interests in the England of their 
day. Their social influence and the social 
opportunities for others of their race accom- 
plished the personal understanding of Lord 
Randolph Churchill with Lord Harting'ton with- 
out which Unionism could not have existed. And 
this though the first Lord Rothschild, during 
his House of Commons days, passed for a 
Liberal, and more than once pleasantly rallied 
the " fourth party's " chief on some little weak- 
ness or oversight. That had happened when 
Randolph Churchill, referring to the then Mr. 
Sclater -Booth, characterized a double surname 
as a sure sign of double mediocrity. " How," 
in an audible aside murmured the great man 
of St. Swithin's Lane, •" about Spender- 
Churchill ? " There still happily survives the 
second of the three brothers, who has done 
more, perhaps, than any other individual towards 
teaching, guiding, and improving the modern 

177 



Great Victorians 

English taste in picture -fancying and art- 
coUecting. There is also still left the youngest 
of Baron Lionel's sons, who, on the Turf as on 
his country estates, is to the present reign what 
his father and his uncle were to that of Queen 
Victoria . 



378 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, Lady, 285 

Aberdeen, Lord, 285 

Abergavenny, Lord, 369-71 

Adelaide, Queen, 57 

Alava, General, 152-3 

Albert Edward, Prince Consort, 

350-4 
Allen, Mrs., 79 
Alvanley, Lord, 105 
Ambassadors, appointment of, 

87-8 
Anson, Lady, 290 
Apsley House, 79-81 
Apsley, Lord, 79 
Arabi, Pasha, 151 
Arbuthnot, Mrs , 82 
Ardagh, Sir John, 149 
Argyll, Duke of, 247 
Arnaud, Marshal, 98, 100 
Asquith, Mr., 362 
Authors, Military, 135-7 

Baillie, Joanna, 34 
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 367-8 
Barrymore, Lord, 356 
Battenberg, Prince Alexander of, 

174 
Bazaine, Marshal, 140-1 
Bismarck, 258, 304-5, 366 
Blackdown Monument, 30, 58, 73 
Blackwood, John, 300, 372-3 
Blomfield, Bishop, 30-1 



Boehm, Sir Edgar, 231 
Borthwick, Sir Algernon, 184, 185 
Bowles, T. Gibson, 184, 374 
Brackenbury, William, 141 
Brackenbury, Sir Henry, 135, 139 ; 

journalistic methods, 140-1 ; 

Army reform, 144, 148 
Bright, John, 261 
British Embassy in Paris, 89 
Browning, Robert, 313-4, 340 
Bryce, Lord, 126, 175 
Buckingham, Duke of, 161 
Bulwer, Sir Henry, 187 
Bulwer-Lytton, 207, 245 
Burdett, Sir Francis, 215 
Burnham, Lord, 371-4 

Caillard, Sir Vincent, 149 
Calcraft, Sir Henry, 210, 214, 233 
Cambridge, Duke of, 360 
Cambronne, 152 
Campbell, Sir Colin, see Lord 

Clyde 
Canning, Lord, 121-2, 166-7, 243, 

274 
Canning, Sir Stratford (154-72) ; 

remarkable forecast of present 

war, 159 ; reminiscences, 163-6 ; 

as author, 168-70 ; 175, 188, 223 
Cardigan, Lord, 100, loi ; his 

unpleasant character, 102 ; as 

duellist, 103 ; rises by purchase. 



379 



Index 



103 ; brutality of, 103-4, io7 '> his 

idea of the British soldier, 131 

Cardwell, Lord, at the War Office, 

134 
Carlyle, Thomas, 206-10, 280 
Castelar, Emilio, 348 
Chesterfield, Lady, 289 
" Chillianwallah," 114 
Churchill, Lord Randolph, 212^ 

365-7, 377 

Churchill, Winston, 366 

Cimatelli, Prince, 46 

Clarendon, Lord, 186, 220 

Clark, Sir Andrew, 285 

Clyde, Lord, 12 1-3 

Cobbett, 215-6 

Coleridge, Sir George, 136 

Commandership - in - Chief, abo- 
lished, 144 

Connaught, Duke of, 149 

Constantinople, British Embassy 
at, 172 

Cooper, John, 364 

Cooper, William, 192 

Corn Laws, repeal of, 211 

Cremorne Gardens, 147 

Cumberland, Duke of, 282 

Daily News, the, 345 

Day, John, 202 

Delane, 261-2, 302 

Denison, Archdeacon, 48, 49-50 

Denman, Hon. G., 177 

Denmark, attacked by Germany, 

195 
Derby, Lord, 36-7, 160, 162, 216, 

220, 223 
Dickens, Charles, 287, 338, 342-5 
Dickens, H. F., K.C., 344 
Dickens, Mary Angela, 344 
Dilke, Sir Charles, 361-2 



Disraeli, 81, 128, 180-6,231,261-2, 
270, 276-7, 279, 290-2, 298-9,316 
Disraeli, Mrs., 119, 130, 291 
Drummond, Henry, 281 
Duff, Sir Mountstuart Grant, 189 

Eden, Rev. R. J., 323 

Edinburgh Reviewers, the, 31 
Edward VII, 266, 354-61 
EUenborough, Lord, 65-6, 243 
Ellice, Hon. Ed., " Bear," 22 1-2, 322 
" Eltchi," see Stratford Canning 
Esher, Lord, 365 
Eugenie, Empress, 257 

" Fane, Violet," 306 

Faraday, Michael, 323-4 

Fitzclarence, Lord Adolphus, 204 

Fitzgerald, Percy, 346 

Fraser, Keith, " Ouida's " hero, 138 

Eraser, Charles, 138-9 

Fraser, Sir William, 137 ; as col- 
lector, 138-9 

Frederick the Great, 319-20 

Frederick Wilhelm I, 320-1 

Freeman, Archdeacon, 40, 339-40 

French, Viscount, 139 

Froude, Archdeacon, 28 

Froude, J. A., 28, 144, 206, 209, 
339, 341 

George IV, 72, 202 

George V, 359 

Germany attacks Denmark, 195 

Gladstone, W. E., 271, 280-5, 3^5 

Gleig, Rev. G. R., 70-2, 76-7, 87, 152 

Glenesk, Lord, see Algernon Borth- 

wick 
Goethe, 319-22 
Goschen, Lord, 283, 360-2 
Gough, Lord, 112-5 
380 



Index 



Grant, James, 334 
Grant-Duff, Sir M. E., 238 
Granville, Lord, 29, 46, 195, 218, 

256-62 
Greville, Charles, 233-4, 245 
Greville, Lord, 285-6 
Grey, Earl, 33 
Grove, Sir Coleridge, 135 

Haig, Sir Douglas, 139 
Haldane, Lord, 145 
Hamber, Thomas, 140-1 
Hamilton, Duke of, 129-30, 356 
Hansom cab, the, 73-4 
Hardinge, Lord, 112-3, 116-8 ; his 

character, 119; death, 120 ; 131 
Harrison, Frederic, 357 
Hartington, Lord, 362-5 
Hay ward, Abraham, 293 - 307 ; 

gives brief description of his 

life, 296-8 
" Henry of Exeter," see Phillpotts, 

Bishop 
Herbert, Dr. Alan, 173 
Herbert, St. Leger, 143 
Herbert, Sidney, 297-8, 302 
Hertford, Lord, 129 
Hood, Tom, 341-2 
Hooker, Sir Joseph, 206-7 
Houghton, Lord, 66, 187,305,314-6 
Howley, Archbishop, 33, 282 
Hozier, Henr}', 137 
Hozier, John, 137 

Iddesleigh, Lord, see Northcote, 

Sir Stafford 
Irving, Edward, 30 
Irving, Henry, 67-8, 315-6 



James, G. P. R, 334 
Jebb, Sir R. C, 354-5 



38] 



Jelf, Dr., 373 

Jervis, Miss, friend of Wellington, 

55 
Jowett, his ambition, 133 ; 362 

Keate, Dr., 310-1 

Kekewich, Trehawke, 230-40 

Kent, Duchess of, 196 

Kidd, Dr. Joseph, 292 

Kilve Court, 32, 55 

Kinglake, 62-3, 95, 97-8, 157, 296-7, 

307, 309-12, 316 
Kingsley, Charles, 334, 359 
Kitchener, Lord, 139, 145-6, 153 
KnoUys, Lord, no 
KnoUys, Sir Wm., 109 
Knowles, Sir James, 313 
Kossuth, 222-3 

Labouchere, Henry, 347-8 
Lamb, Lady Caroline, 84 
Landor, Walter Savage, 37-8 
Lane-Poole, Stanley, 171 
Lansdowne, Lord, 209 
Lansfeldt, Countess, 205 
Law, Sir Edward, 149 
Lawrence, G. A., 331-7 
Lawrence, Henry, in-2, 131 
Lawrence, Lord, 110-2, 131 
Layard, A. H., 285 
Law Magazine, the, 301 
Lecky, W. E. H., 206, 208, 339 
Leech, John, 328 
Leveson-Gower, E. P., 192, 213 
Liddell, Dean, 356-8 
Locker, Frederick, 273 
Loder, G., 234 
Lowe, Robert, 134, 269-79 
Lucknow, relief of, 121 
Luttrell, Col. Francis, 52 
Lyell, Sir Charles, 323 



Ind 



ex 



Lyndhurst, Lord, 33 
Lyons, Lord, 256-7, 274 

Macaulay, Lord, 229 

Mackenzie, Sir Morel, 316 

Magee, Dr., 282 

Mallet du Pan, 128 

Mallet, Sir Louis, 128-9, 3^3 

Mallock, W. H., 288 

Malmesbury, Lord, 223-6, 245 

Manning, Cardinal, 283, 324, 
326 

Martin, Mrs. Mountjoy, 263-4 

Massena, 71-2 

Mather affair, the, 197-8 

Maurice, Rev. F. D., 315-6 

Melbourne, Lord, 196, 220, 306 

Metternich, 201 

Milman, Sir Archibald, 317 

Milman, Dean, 317-9, 323-4 

Milner, Lord, 362 

Milnes, Monckton,s5e Lord Hough- 
ton 

Milnes, Pemberton, 187 

Moltke, 149, 150 

Montagu, Wortley, and Lady Mary, 
172 

Montalembert, 264 

Montefiore, Sir Moses, 266 

Montez, Lola, 205 

Morier, Sir Robert, 174 

Morning Chronicle, the, 302 

Mowbray, Sir John, 142 

Mudford, W. H., 239 

Murray, Granville, 16 1-2 

Napier, Sir Robert, 276-7 

Napoleon, 77 

Napoleon III, 213, 257, 263-5, 

302-3 
Nelson, Lord, 71 



Nevill, Lady Dorothy, 67-8 
Nore mutiny, the, 151-2 
Norman, Genl. Sir Henry, 130 
Norreys, Lord, British Ambassador 

in 1566, 87 
Northcote, Sir Stafford, 237-40 
Norton, Hon. Mrs., 306 

O'Brien, Sir P., 203 
O'Connel, 235 

Officer, new style of, 135, 139 
Oliphant, Lawrence, 288 
Orleanist Party, the, 263-6 
Orloff, Count, 66 
Osborne, Bernal, 43, 298 
Otway, Sir Arthur, 264 
" Ouida," 335-7 
Outram, Sir James, 121 
Overstone, Lord, 316-7 

Pakenham, Lady Catherine, first 
Duchess of Wellington, 84 

Palmerston, Lady, 191-5, 303 

Palmerston, Lord (177-99) > ^t 
home, 182-4 ' his friends, 184-5 ; 
school days, 187 ; French dislike 
of, 190-1 ; puzzles foreigners by 
the truth, 193 ; his flirtations, 
194 ; quarrel with Wellington, 
195-6 ; in " Endymion," 198 ; 
death, 199 ; 201 ; arbiter of 
fashion, 202 ; 214-5, 220-2, 259- 
60, 303 

Pavilion, the Brighton, 231-2 

Pearl, Cora, 205 

Peel, Sir Robert 1, 29, 31 ; death of, 
204, 210-11 

Peel, Sir Robert II, 234 

Peel, Sir Robert III, 228-34 

Pender, Sir John, 142 

Persigny, i6o-i 



382 



Ind 



ex 



Phillpotts, Bishop, " Henry of 
Exeter " (25-50) ; his Anglo- 
Catholic sympathies, 26 ; ap- 
pearance and style, 26-7 ; attacks 
upon Howley, 33 ; views on 
Reformation, 40, 85-6 

Pitt, 15 1-2 

Potter, Sir John, 130 

Purchase of Commissions, 135 

Quain, Sir Richard, 255, 292 

Raglan, Lord, 94-6 ; Crimean com- 
mand, 97 ; character, 98 ; loss 
of arm at Waterloo, 99 ; nearly 
faints at Savernake, 100 ; loi, 102 

Ralli, Pandeli, 146 

Ranelagh, Lord, 31 1-2 

Ravensworth Castle, 53 

Reform Club, 223 

Regent, the Prince, 60 

Reid, Capt. Mayne, 335 

Reynolds, Mrs., 288 

Rice, A. Thorndike, 149-50 

Richmond, Duchess of, her his- 
toric ball, 59 

Roberts, Lord, 13 1-3 

Rothschild, Baron, 207 

Rothschild, Baron Lionel, 267, 

375-8 
Rousseau, J.-J., 321-2 
Rowcliffe, famous heckler, 178-9 
Russell, Earl, 207-8 
Russell, Lord John, 205-7 '> attack 

on Corn Laws, 212 ; upsets 

Government, 216; 221-2, 245, 

271 
Russia, affairs of, 158-60 



Sala, G. A., 335-43 
Salisbury, Lady, 78 



Salisbury, Lord, 132, 245 
Scott, Sir Walter, 34, 53-4, 76 
Schleswig-Holstein, annexation of, 

303 

Shaftesbury, Lady, 194 

Shaftesbury, Lord, 168-9, 3^5 

Sherbrooke, Lord, see Lowe 

Sikh War, 11 2-3 

Skirrow, Charles, 203-4 

Sleep, gift of statesmen, 151 

Smedley, Francis, 337-8 

Smith, Assheton, 106 

Smith, Goldwin, 356-7 

Smith-Dorrien, General, 139 

Soldiers, private, changing views 
of, 13 1-2 

Somerset, Lord Fitzroy, see Lord 
Raglan 

" Squarsons " of Devon and Somer- 
set, 48 

Standard, the, 140, 239 

Stanhope, Lord, 287 

Stanley, Dean, 359 

Stewart, Sir Donald, 124-5 > his 
modesty, 126 ; character, 127, 

131 
Stokes, H. Sewell, 312 
" Stone, Harry," 336-7 
Strachan-Davidson, Dr., 331 
Stubbs, Dr., 340 
Surtees, R. S., 327-9 
Sussex, Duke of, 29 
Sutherland, Duke of, 196-7 

Tait, Archbishop, 270 
Talleyrand, on Phillpotts, 43 ; 

Wellington on, 76 ; 163, 190, 

197 
Telegraph, Daily, the, 325, 371-3 
Temple, Archbishop, 238, 318 
Tennyson, 229, 312-5 



383 



Index 



Thackeray, 287, 341-2 

Thiers, 188, 219, 265, 299, 300, 301, 

312 
Times, The, 261-3, 271, 302 
Tiverton, Palmerston at, 177 
Torrens, W. McCuUagh, 203 
Trevelyan, Sir Charles, 134, 259 
Trevelyan, H., loi 
Tuohy, J. M., 229 



Urquhart, David, 189 
Vanderwere, Sylvain, 197 



Victoria, Queen, 117, 

222-3, 243, 277 
Villiers, Charles, 207 
Voltaire, 321 



149, 196-7, 



Warburton, Elliot, 311 

Waterloo, Battle of, 58-61 ; the 
Duke of Wellington on, 82 

Webster, Lady Frances, 84 

Welby, Lord, 308 

Wellesley, Lord, 65 

Wellington, ist Duke of (50-90) ; 
ancestry, 50-2 ; monument to, 
51 ; amusements, 55 ; the Sage 
of Europe, 56 ; scheme for 
Defence of London, 62-3 ; as 
Premier, 63-4 ; oratory, 75 ; 
opinion of Talleyrand, 76 ; aris- 
tocratic principles, 81 ; his real 
sensibility, 82 ; as diplomatist, 



89 ; buys the Embassy in Paris ; 
89 ; 96 ; his idea of the British 
soldier, 131 ; 145 ; before San 
Sebastian, 152-3 ; his relations 
with Palmerston, 195-6 

Wellington, 2nd Duke of, 50-1, 
64, 67-70 ; his opinion of his 
father and Nelson, 71 ; 75-6 ; 
145, 232 

Wells, H. G., 338 

Westminster School, 95 

Wetherall, Adjutant-General, 116- 
117 

Wetherell, Sir Charles, 28 

White, Sir Wm., 172-5 

Wliyte-Melville, G. J., 330 

Wilberforce, Bishop, 323-6, 359 

Willoughby, Agnes, 205 

Wilson, Harriett, 84 

Wilson, John (" Christopher 
North"), 345 

Wolff, Sir Henry Drummond, 
225-6, 264-5, 291 

Wolseley, Lord, 132-3, 137 ; not 
Irish, 141 ; intellectual powers, 
142-3 ; reforms, 142 ; Con- 
tinental opinion of, 146, 147 ; 
gift of sleep, 151 ; tastes, 152-3 

Wolseley, Ladj'^, 150 

Wombwell, Sir Charles, loi, 204 

Wood, Sir Evelyn, 135 

Yates, Edmund, 335, 346-7 



UNWIN BROTHERS, UMITED, THE GBESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND l-ONDON 









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